The case of Jonah Gbemre v. Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited made a historic deviation from the usual trend of seeking monetary compensation by host communities in oil-rich regions in Nigeria. Rather, it seeks to correct regulatory shortcomings which were upheld by the court but never enforced. This article argues that the failure to enforce the judgment of the court is a missed opportunity to strengthen the environmental regulatory framework in the Nigerian oil and gas industry. It further argues that if the judgment had been enforced, it could have contributed to the reduction of the militant activities in the region and also encourages a significant change in the pattern of redress sought by litigants whose communities have been affected by the operations of oil multinational corporations in the region.

This article addresses the potential widespread conflict between the development of energy access projects and human rights risks and violations in Africa. While this conflict is well known in the continent of Africa due largely to the need to increase energy access, solutions to tackle it are scarce. This article proposes using the United Nations (UN) Human Rights-Based Approach (HRBA) strategically to create a new framework to conceptualize and solve such conflict. For this purpose, it analyses the effectiveness of the HRBA framework, whilst highlighting some of the challenges facing its implementation in African countries. The article concludes that until human rights risks and violations – considered to be ‘energy injustice’ concerns – are mainstreamed through the HRBA framework and its principles into the plan and development of energy access projects, the conflict will continue to rise and may become another dilemma similar to the environmental protection and energy development discourse in Africa.

Traditionally, the discovery and exploitation of natural resources can change the destiny of countries in which they are found. However, history shows that in many developing resourcerich states, particularly in Africa, many citizens do not benefit from the resource revenues. This is due to factors such as mismanagement of the resource revenues, lack of transparency and accountability and corruption, amongst others. All of these are characterised by what is known as the 'resource curse' phenomenon. This article examines the resource curse phenomenon with a jurisdictional focus on Nigeria's oil-rich Niger Delta region (NDR). Further, it considers a potential legal instrument -the Impact and Benefit Agreement (IBA) -that could be used to resolve some of the problems characterised by the resource curse in the region. Using Canada as a reference point, the article demonstrates that the adoption of IBAs could be an alternative legal strategy for resolving socio-economic and environmental symptoms of the resource curse in Nigeria's oil-rich region.

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