Benue State University, Makurdi

Moving away from the Politicised: National Security and Gas Flaring in the Niger Delta

Godwin Ichimi

Abstract

This paper employs the Copenhagen Securitization Model to examine the issue of gas flaring in the Niger Delta as it relates to Nigeria’s environmental and national security imbroglio. From within the context of contemporary International Relations (IR) and International Political Economy (IPE), the notion of environmental security better communicates the critical nature of environmental problems like climate change, greenhouse gases, global warming, pollution, desertification, flooding, and acid rain among others. The paper argues that gas flaring in the Niger Delta, as an aspect of environmental security in Nigeria and internationally, has been largely managed within standard political system paradigms and should urgently move away from this part of the spectrum. It posits, after examining extant legislations and policies, that gas flaring has persisted as an environmental security issue in Nigeria because emergency actions beyond the state’s standard procedure have not been adequately embraced from within the confines of these paradigms. It is concluded therefore that the actualization of such emergency actions requires gas flareout commitments and strategies to move away from the politicized to the securitised end of the public policy spectrum as modeled by the Copenhagen School.

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