Child Right And Development Implementation Foundation Inc.

DECOLONIZATION OF LEGAL EDUCATION: WHY RIGHTS OF NATURE MUST RETURN HOME TO THE DELTA PEOPLES OF SOUTHERN NIGERIA

For too long, Legal Education in Nigeria taught us that land is “Property”. That rivers are “Water Resources”. That forests are “Timber Stock”.

That was not our Law. That was Colonial Law.

Before the gavel, before the Royal Niger Company came, before the statute books flown in from London, our Ancestors in the Delta area already had a legal system. The Ijaw, Urhobo, Itsekiri, Isoko, Ndokwa, Kalabari, Ibibibio, e.t.c, did not ask “who owns the river?” They asked “what are our duties to the river?”

The creek was not property. The creek was kin. The forest was not “timber stock”. The forest was sanctuary, pharmacy, ancestor. To pollute it was not just “environmental damage”. It was sacrilege. It was breaking covenant.

Colonial law erased that. It taught our lawyers, judges, and lawmakers to see nature only as objects humans use. 60 years later, we are living with the result: pipelines burst, creeks blacken, farmlands die, children grow up breathing gas flares. And our courts still ask: “Prove human injury.”

That is not justice. That is a legal language designed for extraction.

DECOLONIZING LEGAL EDUCATION MEANS REMEMBERING + RECLAIMING

1. REMEMBER: Rights of Nature is not “foreign NGO talk”. It is our oldest law.
Your grandfather’s taboo against fishing during spawning season? That was the river’s right to regenerate.
The sacred grove no one could farm? That was the forest’s right to exist.
RoN is just the modern legal words for what the Delta already knew: humans are not owners. We are guardians.

2. RECLAIM: If we keep teaching law as “land = property”, we will keep producing lawyers who can’t stop the next oil spill.
Decolonized legal education must train a new generation of Delta lawyers, activists, judges who can stand in court and say:
“My Lord, under Section 20 of the Constitution + Article 24 of the African Charter, this creek has right to life. The spill violated _its_ rights, not just human rights. And the creek, through its community guardians, demands restoration.”

WHY THE DELTA PEOPLES MUST LEAD THIS IN AFRICA

No region in Africa understands the stakes better than you. You have watched “economic development” turn into dead mangroves and poisoned water. You have watched legal cases drag 20 years or more while communities suffer.

Right of Nature-RoN changes the game for Oil-producing Communities:

1. SHIFTS THE BURDEN: Polluter must prove they did NOT violate the river’s right to flow, be clean, regenerate. Not communities proving sickness.

2. GIVES VOICE TO THE VOICELESS: The creek, the fish, the mangrove get legal guardians. Elders, women, youth can speak _for_ them in court and policy rooms.

3. PROTECTS CULTURE + LIVELIHOOD: When the river has rights, destroying it becomes a legal crime against both people AND territory. That protects fishing, farming, and the spiritual life tied to water.

4. OPENS NEW FUNDING: Global climate + restoration funds are now flowing to places that recognize ecosystem rights. Delta communities can access resources as “guardians”, not just “victims”.

TO LAW STUDENTS, LECTURERS, PHILOSOPHERS, ACTIVISTS, CHIEFS, AND YOUTH IN THE DELTA:

Decolonization is not about rejecting all foreign law. It is about refusing to let colonial law be the _only_ law we know.

Imagine if Delta State University, DELSU, UNIPORT Law Faculties started teaching “Indigenous Environmental Jurisprudence” alongside “Tort Law(Tort Liability)”.
Imagine if community paralegals were trained to draft “Community Charters of Rights for Ogbotobo Creek” or “Forcados River”.
Imagine if the next generation of SANs walked into court carrying both the Constitution AND the oral laws of their ancestors.

That is how RoN becomes real in Nigeria. Not by importing Ecuador’s constitution. By translating our own.

The oil may have come from your soil. But the law that protects your soil must come from your worldview.

The river is tired of being evidence in human cases. It is time the river became the plaintiff.

QUESTION FOR ALL OF US: If the Forcados River could file one lawsuit today, what right would it claim first? And who in this room would stand as its guardian?

Let’s stop training lawyers for a broken system. Let’s train guardians for a living Delta.

Written for Child Right And Development Implementation Foundation Inc.
By: Most Rev'd Dr Tony-voke Oforishe Sunday,
President: Child Right And Development Implementation Foundation Inc.