IGWEBUIKE: African Journal of Arts and Humanities

The contemporary issues of environmental pollution and degradation are demanding the revision of the values of the human person as a subject of lived-experience in relation to all aspects of creation. It is on recognition that most of the effects of environmental pollution and degradation are results or products of human activities (actions) in and on the environment through the increasing quests for industrialization, urbanization, and technological civilization, especially in mining, military engagements, nuclear weapon testing, and oil exploration. It is on conviction that Gareth Hardin came up with the ethics of lifeboat- an ethical principle that states the importance for the recognition of the fact that one’s activities on the environment have the capacity to affect the wholeness of the human community. Relating this principle to the oilexploration activities that are now oil exploitation activities in the Niger-Delta region by some national and multinational corporations and the litany of illegal refineries, causing a lot of oil spills and gas flaring, are greatly affecting lives and livelihood in the region. Adopting an expository and phenomenological method of analysis, the paper concludes that all persons, groups, and corporations involved in the oil exploration, better still, oil exploitation in the Niger-Delta Region, should be conscious of the values of the human person and recognize the indispensable connectivity of the human person in society. With this caution, we should remember that the environment is the boat that all humanities are sealing with in the journey of existence and living, and what happens to a part of the environment, which in this case, the Niger-Delta Region, will indispensably happen to the whole Nigerian society. Therefore, there are needs for moral or ethical checks on natures and contents of human activities on the environment as a remedy to overcome environmental pollution and degradation and advance the causes of environmental sustainability.

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