Mainstreaming Enforcement for the Victims of Environmental Pollution: Towards Effective Allocation of Legislative Competence under a Federal Constitution

One of the key features which characterise the severe pollution and degradation of the Niger Delta environment from oil industry activities has been the absence of justice for the victims. The failure on the part of the regulatory agencies to hold perpetrators accountable for environmental pollution is linked to weak and ineffective legislative and institutional frameworks. To this end, a lot of attention has been paid to the need for review of specific laws. However, while conceding the need for review of various laws, this paper argues that the challenge to enforcement transcends merely ‘fixing’ individual laws, to the Federal Constitution upon which the overall framework for regulation and enforcement is based. Specifically, the paper analyses the allocation of legislative competence between various levels of government under the Federal Constitution and the implications of this for effective environmental enforcement. The analysis draws from experiences in other countries – the US and India – with similar legal systems and Federal Constitution.