Environmental Degradation in Niger Delta Nigeria: Implications on the Well-Being of the Host Communities

Abstract

Decades of oil exploitation, exploration, and production activities in the Niger Delta have led to severe environmental degradation that has created complex problems in the region. As such, environmental exploitation has been a major point  of  contention  between  the  Nigerian  government  and  multinational  oil corporations. The study adopted an Ex-Post facto research design and a multi stage sampling technique which comprised of purposive, stratified and proportional sampling technique. Purposive sampling procedure was used to select six communities in Rivers State, Nigeria. One hypothesis was tested at 0.05 level of significance. Results showed that environmental degradation, education  and  occupation  significantly  impacts  on  the  well  being  of  host communities in Rivers State Nigeria.  Thus, it recommended that, The Federal Government must streamline the activities of the multinational oil corporations which have so far operated without environmental regulations to guide their activities  in  the region,  in  an  attempt  to  limit  the  long-term  impact  of environmental degradation.