The central theme of this paper is to see if there is relationship between natural resources management and sustainable development. This investigation was conducted in Nigeria using  four States of Nigeria Oil rich Niger Delta; Bayelsa, Edo, Anambra, and Delta. The sub objectives were to  see whether there is significant relationship between legislation and protection practices and between transparency and social equit both regarded as hypothesis 1 and 2. The sampled population was limited to 96 senior and knowledge officers of the Ministries of Environment of the four selected oil rich states. Arising from hypothesis, the variables in the study were measured using IBM SPSS. The results revealed that there is significant and positive correlation between natural resources management and sustainable development. In the first test of hypothesis for instance; the Pearson's r of .033 and correlation of .841 indicated that there is substantial relationship between legislation and protection practices of natural resources in the states of investigation. For the second test of hypothesis, with Pearson's r .021 and correlation of  .907, the test validated the hypothesis indicating that transparency is crucial for ensuring accountable governance and equitable benefit. Limitations related to this study was in the area of funding to enable higher population of sample size and and measuring technique. These findings will empower people to understand how twinly correlated is the relationship between naturam resources management and sustainable development. Such degree of correlations indicated dare need for concerted efforts to ensure that policies are formulated to address sustainability of natural resources in order to guanrantee our common good.