I thank Kebetkache Women Development and Resource Centre and the Centre for Leadership, Strategy and Development for the invitation to be a part of this important occasion. I congratulate the graduands on completing this phase of your leadership journey. I also commend the institutions behind this school for recognising that society cannot make needed progress without responsible and duly equipped leadership.

Our theme today, Leadership for Environmental Justice in the Niger Delta, is both urgent and demanding. It asks us to look beyond the language of leadership and examine the conditions under which people live, the systems that shape those conditions, and the choices we make when confronted with injustice.

The Niger Delta is a land of immense ecological and cultural wealth. Its rivers, creeks, forests, farmlands and mangroves sustain communities and livelihoods. Decades of oil exploration and extraction have left many of these same communities struggling with polluted waters, damaged farmlands, declining fisheries, gas flaring and the loss of livelihoods. The wealth extracted from the region has not translated into a life of dignity for many of its people and this is not simply an environmental problem, but a question of justice, power, accountability and the meaning of development itself.

When a farmer observes a decrease in land production, when a fisherman cannot rely on the creeks that support their livelihood, or when a young person grows up in an environment contaminated by pollution, we must consider who gains from the current system and who pays for it. The narrative of environmental injustice frequently involves gains going to other places while the liabilities stay with the community. This extractivist pathway is both colonial and neocolonial. This suggests that building appropriate leadership is a decolonial project.

With 240,000 to 260,000 barrels of crude oil spilled annually into the Niger Delta environment and with routine gas flaring ravaging the region for decades, we have it as a key duty to demand all presidential and governorship candidates to clearly state what their focus on the environment would be when elected. Any candidate that does not have concrete plans for the remediation, and  restoration of the deeply damaged environment should not be given a single vote by the electorate.  Why should you vote for any politician who allows the inferno at Ororo-1 oil well, off the coast of Awoye community, Ondo State, to persist for over six years? Why should anyone vote for politicians doing nothing about the gas eruptions at Bille community in Degema Local Government?

Why should you vote for anyone who cannot promise to stop the uncontrolled crude oil fire burning directly on the water surface at Oil Well 9 (OML 18) in the Ofiomina-Ama Alakiri community, in the Okrika Local Government Area (LGA) of Rivers State?

Leadership Beyond Titles

We must understand that leadership is not confined to those who hold public office, occupy executive positions or speak before media microphones or from prestigious platforms. Leadership could be seen in a woman organising her community to defend its water, the young person documenting an oil spill, the fisher insisting that polluted waters must be investigated, and the community member who refuses to accept environmental destruction as the price of survival.

These are not small acts. They are expressions of agency in the face of systems that often seek to silence ordinary people. Leadership is concretised through consistent and repeated repudiation of environmental crimes.

True leadership listens before it speaks. It recognises that communities are not empty spaces awaiting development, nor are their people passive recipients of decisions made elsewhere. They possess knowledge, experience and the right to shape the futures of their territories.

This is particularly important for women. Women often bear a disproportionate share of the consequences of environmental destruction, especially regarding farming, fishing, water collection, food preparation and care to sustain family and community life. Yet they are too frequently excluded from the rooms where decisions about land, energy, resources and development are made.

A leadership school committed to environmental justice must therefore nurture leaders who challenge exclusion, share power and create spaces where the voices of women, young people and marginalised communities influence decisions.

We cannot speak meaningfully about environmental justice in the Niger Delta without confronting extractivism. Extractivism is a way of organising society in which nature is treated primarily as a commodity, communities become expendable, and the pursuit of profit takes precedence over life. Leaders must see beyond the carrot dangled before them by governments, corporations or speculators. A true leader must work for the collective good of his/her people and community.  Where destructive extraction occurs, or becomes the norm as is the case of the Niger Delta, leaders must ask questions and demand answers. Did the community give consent for such exploitation? Was the requirements of the law followed? What benefits will come to the community? What harms will ensue and how would that mitigated?

Nigeria is currently positioning herself to be a key player in the production of critical minerals for the needed energy transition. There are already reasons to worry because the pattern of exploitation appears set to be deadly and may surpass the horrors inflicted on the Niger Delta by oil companies. In 2010 hundreds of children died from lead poisoning emanating from artisanal gold mining in Zamfara State. We have heard of mines fatally collapsing in Plateau State. Recently 37 teenagers were arrested for allegedly engaging in illegal mining in Niger State. All but one died in detention. With all these anomalies, the cry from citizens has not risen beyond a whimper. There is a huge leadership gap.

Changing the energy source without changing this underlying logic will not deliver justice. A transition from fossil fuels to minerals for supposedly green technologies can reproduce the same patterns of dispossession if communities continue to lose their lands, waters and livelihoods without meaningful consent, protection or accountability. Without strong environmental justice leadership in our communities, and nation at large, the recently announced $700 billion memorandum of agreement between the USA and Nigeria over the country’s critical minerals endowment should ring alarm bells because many territories will be sacrificed to ensure extraction go on without any impediment and that the minerals flow out of the country to serve the need of others.

The questions that must be answered are whose interests our energy systems serve, who controls them, and who pays the price? Leadership for environmental justice must defend the rights of communities, insist on corporate and government accountability, and advance alternatives rooted in ecological integrity, democratic participation and collective wellbeing. It must also recognise that remediation cannot be reduced to contracts and technical reports. Damaged ecosystems must be restored, livelihoods rebuilt, and communities adequately empowered to participate in decisions that affect them.

The Petroleum Industry Act and other policy frameworks must be assessed not merely by their promises, but by their actual consequences for the people and environments of the Niger Delta. Policies are meaningful when they improve lives, protect ecosystems and make those responsible for harm answerable for their actions. Some leaders have applauded the provisions in the PIA that allocate 3 percent of production costs for community development. They conveniently ignore the fact that it is the oil companies who appoint executive members of the trust fund boards. They also forget that the law empowers the oil companies to utilise the community funds to repair oil companies infrastructure if harm comes from third parties. Who determines when a facility is damaged by third parties and why criminalize entire communities for an offence that may be committed by an individual?

The Courage to Imagine and to Act

Graduands, your certificates mark an achievement, but they also invite you into a deeper responsibility. The world does not lack leaders who can speak eloquently about change. What it needs are leaders willing to confront uncomfortable truths, resist the capture of public institutions by private interests, and translate principles into action. We need leaders who understand that integrity cannot be separated from accountability, and that development cannot be measured only in roads, buildings, water boreholes, revenue and economic growth. We must also ask whether communities can breathe clean air, drink safe water, feed themselves, preserve their cultures and live without fear of environmental destruction.

We need leaders who understand that justice is not a favour granted to communities by those in power. It is a right that must be respected and defended.

Leadership must therefore be measured not by how many people become empowered through our work. It must be measured by whether we leave our communities, institutions and ecosystems in better condition than we found them.

As you graduate today, I encourage you to carry your learning into the places where decisions are made and, just as importantly, into the communities where the consequences of those decisions are lived. Be willing to listen. Be prepared to question. Have the courage to act. And never allow the pursuit of position to become more important than the purpose of leadership.

The Niger Delta does not need leaders who merely manage the consequences of injustice. It needs leaders who will work with communities to dismantle the conditions that produce it.

I congratulate the graduands and welcome the incoming students. May your leadership be measured by the lives you touch, the injustices you challenge, the communities you strengthen and the future you help make possible.

Thank you to the leadership of the Kebetkache/Centre-LSD Leadership School for offering this much needed service.

This is the text of my Guest Lecture at the 8th Graduation Ceremony and Annual Leadership Lecture of the Kebetkache/Centre-LSD Leadership School, 2025/2026 Session
17 October 2026 | Port Harcourt, Nigeria