A resource is discovered; governments celebrate its economic promise, investors arrive, licences are issued, and extraction begins. Wealth leaves the territory, while pollution, damaged livelihoods and broken landscapes remain. Communities that live closest to the source of the resource never get to share in its benefits but bear its costs. For more than seven decades, the Niger Delta has lived this history. Today, as global demand intensifies for lithium, nickel, copper, rare earth elements and other so-called critical minerals, Nigeria risks reproducing the same extractive order across new territories, this time under the banner of green energy transition.
This was the urgent concern at the heart of the Third Nigeria Socio-Ecological Alternatives Convergence (NSAC), convened by the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) and partner organisations in Abuja on 14 July 2026 under the theme, Deforestation, Mining and the Crisis of Human Security in Nigeria. The gathering brought together traditional institutions, frontline communities, academics, civil society, labour, government representatives, women and youth groups, environmental justice advocates and development partners. The warning from Abuja was definite: Nigeria cannot afford to replace oil sacrifice zones with green mineral sacrifice zones.
“There is no justice in replacing fossil-fuel sacrifice zones with so-called green minerals extracted in the same destructive manner.“ – Nnimmo Bassey
Nigeria is losing an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 hectares of forest every year and has already lost more than 90 per cent of its original forest cover; these figures tell only part of the story. Every forest lost can mean a weakened watershed, food and medicine disappearing, wildlife habitats fragmented, livelihoods disrupted, and communities made more vulnerable to floods, erosion, climate extremes, and displacement. Nnimmo Bassey, in his welcome address, refused the comforting fiction that restoration can proceed alongside continuing destruction:
“We cannot restore forests while chainsaws are still roaring. We cannot heal rivers while mining waste continues to poison them. We cannot speak of sustainability while sacrificing communities at the altar of profit.”
That principle should be the starting point for Nigeria’s environmental policy. Restoration cannot be an afterthought used to legitimise continued destruction; tree planting cannot compensate for the loss of complex, living forests; carbon credits cannot substitute for the rights of communities. Mine closure promises cannot be allowed to become excuses for opening territories to extraction without first establishing who will repair the damage and who will pay. Forests, wetlands, rivers, farmlands and biodiversity are part of our ecological commons: living systems that sustain communities, cultures and generations. They cannot be reduced to timber stocks, carbon units, mineral deposits or territories awaiting investors.
Some of Nigeria’s best-preserved forests remain standing precisely because communities have protected them across generations. Yet the people who have served as custodians of these territories increasingly face pressures from commercial logging, mining, infrastructure expansion, land acquisition and carbon-market projects. Conservation that dispossesses communities is not ecological justice. Nor should communities be reduced to guards over forests from which their own rights have been removed.
This is a lesson Nigeria cannot afford to ignore: human security is impossible when people are denied clean water, fertile soil, viable livelihoods and safe territories. Yet the relationship between forests and insecurity must not be distorted into an argument for destroying forests in order to eliminate criminal hideouts. Forests are not the enemy. The deeper problem is the failure of governance; the abandonment of territories, exclusion of traditional custodians, proliferation of illicit economies and inability of institutions to protect both communities and ecosystems.
The opening remarks of His Royal Highness Alhaji Ibrahim Usman Jibril, Emir of Nasarawa, represented at the Convergence by Dr Salisu Dahiru, pioneer Director-General of the National Council on Climate Change, identified this vicious cycle of resource plunder, ecological degradation and violent conflict. Where armed groups gain control of resource-rich territories, illegal extraction can finance violence. Where regulation is weak and powerful interests operate without accountability, communities are left to carry the burden.
The global transition from fossil fuels has intensified demand for minerals used in batteries, electric vehicles, solar technologies, electricity grids and other low-carbon infrastructure. Nigeria is positioning itself within this emerging mineral economy. But beneath the maps of lithium, nickel, copper, tin, tantalite and rare earth deposits are not empty geological spaces. There are farms, forests, rivers, grazing routes, sacred places, homes and ancestral territories. There are people.
Professor Omolade Adunbi’s keynote posed the question that should precede every new mining licence and every promise of green industrialisation: “What kind of decarbonisation, governed by whom, for whose benefit, and at whose cost?” The question matters because low-carbon does not automatically mean just.
“A battery may be low-carbon, but that does not automatically make it just. A solar panel may produce clean electricity, but its supply chain may still be marked by exploitation. A wind turbine may reduce emissions, but its materials may come from landscapes where communities have little say.” – Professor Omolade Adunbi
A transition that lowers emissions elsewhere by destroying forests, contaminating rivers and dispossessing communities here is not justice. It is the relocation of ecological harm. Nigeria therefore faces a danger greater than simply poor mining practice; the possibility of reproducing the oil economy in another form. If critical minerals are treated merely as a quick substitute for declining oil revenues, the country may exchange crude oil for crude minerals while leaving the political logic of extraction untouched.
The Niger Delta has already shown the consequences of that logic. Wealth is extracted; environmental costs are localised, benefits accumulate elsewhere, and communities demand accountability and are treated as obstacles to development. Ecological damage outlives the companies that caused it.
As Professor Adunbi warned: “Extraction without justice produces resistance; wealth without repair produces resentment; development without consent produces instability.” Nigeria does not need another devastated region to learn a lesson already written in oil spills, gas flares, damaged mangroves and broken livelihoods.
The Third NSAC called for a fundamental shift in how Nigeria governs its forests, minerals and energy transition. Not every mineral deposit should become a mine. Primary forests, wetlands, critical watersheds, biodiversity hotspots, food-producing territories and sacred landscapes must be recognised as No-Go Zones. The presence of a commercially valuable mineral does not create an automatic entitlement to extract it. Communities must also have the power to shape decisions before licences are issued and projects become faits accomplis. Free, Prior and Informed Consent must be mandatory for projects affecting Indigenous Peoples and host communities. Consultation after a licence has been granted is not consent, nor can the approval of a single local elite substitute for the informed decision of an entire community.
Those who profit from extraction must also bear enforceable responsibility for repair. Independent environmental and social impact assessments, restoration bonds, credible mine-closure plans and public disclosure of licences, contracts and environmental compliance should be requirements before extraction begins, not promises made after rivers have been polluted and livelihoods destroyed. As Professor Omolade Adunbi put it: “No extraction without restoration. No profit without repair.”
Nigeria must also break with the colonial pattern of exporting raw materials cheaply and importing expensive finished products. Any participation in the critical-minerals economy should strengthen domestic value addition, technology transfer and local industrial capacity, while artisanal miners should be supported towards safer livelihoods and environmental responsibility. These priorities demand a National Just Energy Transition and Critical Minerals Strategy that connects mining policy with forest protection, land rights, energy access, community development, ecological restoration and human security.
At the heart of the Convergence was a simple but consequential question: who has the power to say no? Too often, communities are invited into the room only after licences have been issued, and investors have arrived, leaving them to negotiate compensation for damage already assumed inevitable. That must change. Nigeria already has enough warnings: the Niger Delta, the abandoned mines of the Jos Plateau, shrinking waters, polluted rivers, disappearing forests and degraded farmlands. The country also has alternatives in community custodianship, indigenous knowledge, ecological restoration, transparent governance and enforceable environmental protections.
The choice is whether Nigeria becomes a quarry for the world’s next industrial revolution, exporting raw minerals while communities absorb the ecological costs, or pursues a transition that protects people and territories. Not everything beneath the soil must be mined. Not every forest must be monetised. Our commons must not be surrendered to corporate profit. The transition Nigeria needs cannot simply exchange crude oil for critical minerals while leaving the logic of extraction untouched. It must defend the commons, protect the rights of communities to decide what happens in their territories and make ecological repair an obligation rather than a promise.
“Critical minerals may be the new oil, but they do not have to become the new curse.” – Professor Omolade Adunbi
The choice before Nigeria is whether to repeat or to repair.
