COMMUNITY PERCEPTION OF INSTITUTIONAL RESPONSE AND POLICY EFFECTIVENESS IN MANAGING OIL POLLUTION IN BAYELSA STATE
Keywords:
Oil pollution, institutional response, environmental, governance, Niger Delta,, community participation, remediation, inter-agency coordination.Abstract
This study examined community perception on institutional response and policy effectiveness in managing oil pollution in Bayelsa State, Nigeria. Two (2) objectives and two (2) research questions were posed for the study while descriptive survey design was adopted. A total of 210 respondents were selected using a multi-stage sampling technique. In the first stage, three oil-impacted local government areas—Ekeremor, Southern Ijaw and Yenagoa - were purposively selected based on their exposure to oil spill incidents. In the second stage, five communities were randomly chosen from each local government area, and respondents were proportionately drawn from different occupational categories including farmers, fishers, traders, civil servants, and traditional leaders. Data were collected using structured questionnaires and key informant interviews. Instrument for data collection was a self-constructed closed ended questionnaire titled Community Perception of Institutional Response and Policy Effectiveness in Managing Oil Pollution Questionnaire (CPIRPEMOPQ).” The instrument was validated by the two experts in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management and the reliability of 0.86 was established using Cronbach Alpha reliability coefficient. Findings revealed that institutional and corporate responses were largely ineffective, characterized by delayed cleanup, inadequate remediation, poor compensation, and limited community participation and weak institutional capacity, fragmented and poorly coordinated governance structures, it also revealed that; corruption and weak accountability, political interference and elite capture, inadequate funding and resource misallocation and weak monitoring as possible factors that limit policy implementation among other findings. The study concludes that systemic failures, stemming from weak coordination, political interference, and insufficient enforcement, undermine effective oil pollution management. It recommends strengthening institutional autonomy, improving inter-agency collaboration, and promoting community-inclusive environmental governance to achieve sustainable remediation and ecological restoration in Nigeria’s oil-producing regions.
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