The third edition of the Niger Delta Conference took place in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, from July 7 to 12, 2025. Organised by the Lekeh Development Foundation with support from Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA), the conference convened civil society organisations, traditional authorities, women leaders, youth groups, scientists, legal experts, and affected community members under the theme Building a Resilient Future: Integrating Climate Action and Community Empowerment in the Niger Delta.
Held against the backdrop of deepening ecological collapse across the region, the conference advanced long-standing demands for climate justice, full environmental remediation, and structural accountability for decades of pollution, land degradation, and dispossession.
The Niger Delta remains a site of ongoing ecological violence. Participants described the environmental and human cost of oil extraction not as legacy damage, but as a present and active condition visible in the continued flaring of gas, poisoned water sources, destroyed livelihoods, and the slow violence of health breakdowns among residents.
Discussions also drew direct links between climate impacts and existing vulnerabilities, especially for women and children who disproportionately bear the brunt of displacement, poverty, and political neglect.
Speakers included Rev. Nnimmo Bassey (Health of Mother Earth Foundation), Constance Meju (Center for Environment Media and Development Communications), Ken Henshaw (We The People), and Ogunlade Olamide (CAPPA), among others.
Across multiple panels, participants demanded the immediate and uncompromising clean-up of polluted sites, including creeks, mangroves, and farmlands, prior to any further divestment by oil companies. There were also calls for an independent health audit of all impacted communities and the accelerated enforcement of the Ogoni Clean-Up process, including its extension to other oil-impacted areas in the region.
The question of justice was central. Environmental crimes, participants argued, must be treated as grave human rights violations. Demands were made for reparations, just compensation, and legal redress. The role of international complicity and regulatory failure was not overlooked, with speakers urging stronger transnational advocacy and litigation mechanisms to hold polluters accountable, both in Nigeria and globally.
The political economy of fossil fuel extraction was also a recurring theme. The conference reaffirmed the need to end fossil fuel expansion and called for a clear policy shift that centres ecological restoration over extractive profit. Participants advocated for a transition grounded in energy sovereignty, land rights, and locally controlled renewables, not corporate-driven green markets.
There was a strong emphasis on women’s leadership and labour in building alternative economies. Participants called for state support for women-led cooperatives, agroecology, and distributed renewable energy projects. These were positioned not as add-ons but as essential to any credible vision of resilience and sovereignty.
Digital tools and traditional ecological knowledge were discussed as mutually reinforcing strategies for resistance, documentation, and reclamation. Participants backed the Niger Delta Climate Justice Action Plan and called for its integration into Nigeria’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
Agroecology was identified as a priority pathway for food security and climate mitigation in the region, especially as industrial farming models have contributed to biodiversity loss and soil depletion.
The conference ended with a field visit to Bomu Community, where participants assessed ongoing clean-up and reclamation efforts led by the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP). While visible progress was acknowledged, the broader message was that technical clean-up efforts will remain superficial unless the underlying structures of extractivism are dismantled. Restitution, participants argued, cannot happen without systemic transformation. Mitigating symptoms without confronting cause will only reproduce the same patterns of exploitation and abandonment. What remains clear is that any pathway forward for the Niger Delta must begin with power—community power over land, resources, and the terms of any future development.
