Enhancing corporate social responsibility in Nigeria's oil and gas producing communities: A contextual analysis

The principal aim of this thesis is to prescribe ameliorative strategies, based on corporate law, to address the negative externalities of the corporate activities of multinational oil and gas companies in the oil and gas producing region of Nigeria.; In doing so, the thesis explores corporate social responsibility in Nigeria's oil and gas producing communities and contends that the multinationals, due mainly to their insensitivity or irresponsibility to the interests of their host communities, are partly responsible for the environmental and human rights crisis in that region of the country. It recommends that Nigerian corporate law be amended to include a mandatory corporate social responsibility regime that compels corporate directors to consider the interests of their host communities contemporaneously with those of the shareholders in the corporate decision making process as the antidote to the lingering environmental and human rights crisis in those communities. It also considers how the law of countries like Canada and the United States can be deployed by shareholders to hold corporations doing business in Nigeria to the standard of corporate responsibility.