Environmental laws are put in place to mitigate the threatening environmental problems resulting from human activities. To checkmate these human activities, courts are established by governments with jurisdictions to entertain environmental litigations to protect and redress environmental wrongs in Nigeria. The aim of this paper is to appraise environmental litigation under the Nigerian jurisprudence and the role of judiciary in resolving such matter. This seminar paper aimed at examining the necessity of compulsory pooling in the context of environmental litigation in the Niger Delta. This seminar paper adopts doctrinal method where the relevant primary and secondary sources were utilised. Essentially, the paper finds that environmental litigations in Nigeria are bedeviled by legal technicalities such that victims of environmental pollution and degradation are ultimately denied access to justice. Ranging from issue of locus to territorial and subject matter jurisdiction, victims of oil spill and environmental degradation are often left without judicial remedies. The paper finds that consequently, the people of the Niger Delta are increasingly losing confidence in the judiciary both at the domestic and international level. This has heightened militancy and youths’ restiveness in the area leading to loss of revenues and sometimes lives. The paper notes with concern the recent trend of outsourcing justice, as evident in attempts to bring environmental pollution cases in Nigeria before domestic courts abroad. It concludes that jurisdiction has been used severally in courts in Nigeria to prevent environmental justice for victims of environmental disasters. This has made the option of litigation as a means of redress un-attractive to most victims of environmental pollution. Lastly, the paper calls for judicial flexibility and a more proactive approach to legal reasoning by Nigerian courts, in order to put environmental matters on the front burner of our national discourse. Unless and until environmental justice is entrenched in Nigeria through judicial activism, Governmental inertia and unwillingness to provide remedies for victims of environmental degradation may continue to fuel militancy in the years ahead.
Keywords: Petroleum, Mining Leases, Pooling, Ownership, Exploitation, Nigeria.