Browsing by Author "AKINSULORE, Adedoyin, Olusegun"

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    Developing and appropriate legal framework for the sustainable development of bitumen in Nigeria.
    (The Department of International Law, Faculty of Law, Obafemi Awolowo University, 2022) AKINSULORE, Adedoyin, Olusegun
    This study examined the evolution of the exploitation of bitumen from a historical perspective. It analysed the legal and institutional frameworks for the exploitation of bitumen in Nigeria. The study also identified legal and regulatory innovations in other jurisdictions that could be adopted for use in the sustainable exploitation of bitumen in Nigeria. It developed a sustainable governance regime for the exploitation of bitumen in Nigeria. This was with a view to ascertaining the suitability of the Nigeria legal regime to the nature of bitumen exploitation. The study relied on both primary and secondary sources of information. The primary source comprised the Nigerian Constitution 1999 (as altered) and legislations such as Nigerian Minerals and Mining Act 2007, Minerals and Mining Regulations 2011, Petroleum Act 1969, National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agencies (NESREA) Act, Canada’s Constitution Act 1867, Responsible Energy Development Act 2012 of the Province of Alberta, Canada and judicial decisions. The secondary source included books, journal articles, conference proceedings, newspapers, magazines and other materials gathered from the Internet. The study adopted an unstructured Key Informants Interviews (KII) methodology to elicit information from notable stakeholders at the institutional and social level in the bitumen subsector of Nigeria. The data collected from these sources were subjected to content analysis. The study revealed that historically, the discovery and development of bitumen by a state have often been maintained by a deliberate state prioritisation of its developmental interests over and above the interests of minority/indigenous groups in the resource area or environmental concerns of international agencies. The study further revealed that considering the technological outlay required for the extraction and processing of bitumen, the Nigeria Mineral and Mining Act (NMMA), 2007 and the Nigerian Minerals and Mining Regulations 2011 do not make provision for this necessary exploitation process, rendering the law and its regulation deficient and unsuitable for the development of bitumen in Nigeria. The study also found that the legal and regulatory innovations in Alberta Canada accommodate the peculiar processing requirements for the development of bitumen while also introducing creative sentencing as an additional form of penalty for infractions on the environment. The study discovered that developing a sustainable governance regime for the bitumen sector would require proper management of tailing ponds in view of the present inadequacy of the statutory provisions. The study concluded that The Nigerian Minerals and Mining Act 2007 and its Regulations of 2011 are deficient and inadequate for the sustainable development of bitumen in Nigeria.