Seo Riders:
– Nigerian legal advocates promote climate justice by training female lawyers in litigation tools.
– NEITI launches climate accountability framework targeting extractive industry emissions and disclosures.
– Calls rise for ecocide laws, ICC action on environmental crimes and holding polluting corporations responsible
Environmental experts in Nigeria are increasingly turning to climate litigation as a strategic tool for ensuring accountability among governments and corporations. Notably, Natural Justice and African Activists for Climate Justice recently trained female lawyers on climate justice techniques in June 2025, aiming to empower women to leverage legal frameworks like the Climate Change Act and Nigeria’s NDC commitments to demand transparency in environmental funds and challenge climate-related harm—like flooding and dam failures—via the courts. Meanwhile, legal analysts are urging Nigeria to strengthen existing statutes under NESREA, EIA regulations, and corporate responsibility laws to facilitate community-led litigation against environmental offenders.
Parallel efforts are underway to embed climate accountability into corporate routines. The Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI) has unveiled a new Energy Transition and Climate Accountability Framework to improve emissions disclosure—particularly methane—and ensure transparency in oil and gas remediation. Its programme, developed alongside the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NRGI) and CJID, is also training journalists and civil society to scrutinize corporate climate performance. At the international level, experts are pushing for broader tools, such as introducing the crime of ecocide into the Rome Statute and advocating for the use of ICC prosecutions to address severe environmental destruction in peacetime. With both grassroots litigation and regulatory innovation gaining momentum, Nigeria’s environmental defenders are forging a pathway toward systemic accountability for climate harm.
