Introduction: The Niger Delta in the Environmental Humanities

By A. Chukwudumebi Obute , Iva Peša AFREXTRACT Project, Jackson Tamunosaki Jack AFREXTRACT Project — AFREXTRACT Project, University of Groningen, The Netherlands

Since the evolution of the Nigerian literary tradition in the 1950s, itself a successor to orature, numerous writers have consistently opted to make society the epicentre of their enterprise. In fact, a handful have even effectuated their literary aspirations through direct interventions in society. From Wole Soyinka’s epic militant-styled seizure of Western Nigerian Broadcasting Service’s facility in 1965 to obstruct the announcement of questionable election results, through Christopher Okigbo’s active participation and death in the Nigerian civil war in 1967 to the more placid Chinua Achebe who became an emissary of the seceding Biafran State during the Civil War (Obafemi, 17), these literary icons project the nexus between art and society as both sacrosanct and iron-clad. In recent memory, Festus Iyayi’s artistic disdain for the maleficence of the postcolonial state spilled over from his literary canvas unto the political domain, as he actively held the government to account for the welfare of university professors. Iyayi, sadly, lost his life in a road accident in Kogi State in 2013 enroute to an avoidable Academic Staff Union of Universities’ (ASUU) meeting (Premium Times). Regardless of the fatal cost that the ilk of Okigbo and Iyayi had to pay, Achebe is resolute that “an African creative writer, who tries to avoid the big social and political issues of contemporary Africa will end up being completely irrelevant” (qtd. in Okoye, 14). Soyinka, in his typical satirical verve, derides such writers as “post-mortem surgeons” (ibid, 14). Without extenuating the foray into the speculative realms in literature, the philosophy of a socio-politically fused creative engagement has broadly reinforced the culture of literary praxis across Nigeria and the Niger Delta in particular. The seasoned Niger Delta poet-laurate, Tanure Ojaide, has insightfully defined Niger Delta literature as creative productions about the region by indigenes and non-indigenes (55a). He further mapped the output from the region into two distinct categories, delineated by what he conceives as “the wave of environmental awareness and distress from oil exploitation” (56a) from the 1980s. Iconic figures such as Gabriel Okara, J. P. Clark, and Elechi Amadi feature prominently in the so-called pre-awareness era. Ken Saro-Wiwa, Ben Okri, Obari Gomba, and Sophia Obi constitute kindred spirits in the age of environmental distress from oil exploitation. Tanure Ojaide and Isidore Okpewho arguably navigate both temporalities, as their works demonstrate significant thematic shifts from the allure of folklores and epics to the ecological distress of the present. Meanwhile, artistic solidarity has been extended by Helon Habila and Ahmed Yerima. These distinctions notwithstanding, the environment has remained an enduring decimal across time in the Niger Delta corpus. For instance, in Gabriel Okara’s seminal poem, “The Call of the River Nun” or J.P. Clark’s The Ozidi Saga, the natural environment evolves as the epicentre of communal and social cohesion. In both works, a nostalgic gaze towards the River Nun and the mangrove forests of Orua and Tarakiri are visibly prominent. While crude oil extraction commenced in the region in 1956 in Otuabagi and in Ogoni in 1958, in the present day Bayelsa and River States respectively, the environmental ramifications from the reckless plunder of the earth slowly unfolded. The environmental collapse in Ogoni reached a crescendo in the 1980s and spurred Ken Saro-Wiwa’s major response through literature and social mobilisation in defence of the Ogonis. Inadvertently corroborating Achebe during his concerted public humiliation of Shell oil corporation for the despoliation of his Ogoni homeland, Saro-Wiwa affirmed that, in a critical situation such as Nigeria’s, literature cannot be divorced from politics but must steep itself deep into it and play an interventionist role (Saro-Wiwa, 81). Perhaps comparable to the generation of suave literati before him, Saro-Wiwa matched his literary output with grassroot mobilisation to effectuate the expulsion of Shell from his homeland in 1993. In addition to Saro-Wiwa’s literary and socio-political efforts, the efficacy of the Ogoni Movement was measurably enhanced through the deployment of audio-visual production in the 1992 documentary, The Heat of the Moment (92-93), the monthly publication of the Ogoni Review newsletter (141), as well as the assemblage of the Federation of Ogoni Women’s Association (Keys, 178). The Ogoni strategy smoothly paired literary and artistic engagements with print media and women’s mobilisation. Consequently, this Special Issue interrogates the eco-conscious sub-genre of Niger Delta literature alongside audio-visual artistic productions, and gender-based mobilisations aimed at the environmental justice cause in the region. While the focus is not exclusive to the Ogoni struggle, it seeks to plumb the multi-faceted strategy into the broader Niger Delta environmental struggle. It specifically zooms in on efforts that historicise environmental pollution from oil extraction, embolden the possibilities of life amidst the contamination, and articulate residents’ pathways to environmental justice. This Special Issue hopes to contribute to the immediate Niger Delta environmental discourse and that of the Global South via its interdisciplinarity. It also aspires to particularly amplify the often-sidelined contributions of women organisations to the struggle. The papers published in this Special Issue are products of the conference “Oil, Environment, and Lifeworlds in the Niger Delta: Environmental History Approaches” held at the University of Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in July 2024. The conference was organised under the auspices of the “Environmental Histories of Resource Extraction in Africa” (AFREXTRACT research project) at the University of Groningen, Netherlands, and funded by the European Research Council. In addition to the Panel Discussions, the AFREXTRACT conference captured a wide range of perspectives under eight sessions that reflected not just the structural, but also the historical realities that underpin how communities respond to oil and environmental changes in the Niger Delta. The theme of the first session, oil and resource governance in the Niger Delta, focused on how indigenous authority, structures, and contestations reshape the meanings of ownership, control, and legitimacy within oil-bearing communities. It further explored the political and administrative entanglements that underpin oil wealth management, while showcasing the tensions that arise in communities in a system of centralised control. Session two addressed environmental protests and activism in the Niger Delta, conveying knowledge on the dynamics of communities’ engagement with oil multinationals and the state. It also showcased how environmental remediation campaigns have led to asset divestment by oil multinationals. The third session paid attention to the issue of oil, livelihoods, and socio-ecological adaptation. Presenters addressed the different ways that oil extraction has disarticulated traditional livelihood systems, while forcing communities to live within a cycle of precarious survival and adaptation. It also highlighted the entry of new socio-economic actors and an emergent power configuration that is shaped by access to a skewed system of oil rent. In the fourth session, artisanal refining and localised extractive practices were discussed, noting that illegal oil theft and refining are not just criminal reactions to a system of economic marginalisation and exclusion, but a network of survival and resistance that deeply reflect the diseased side of the oil economy in the region. The session also captured the cultural aspects of this illicit economy, emphasising how communities conceive of, narrate, and contest their involvement with artisanal refining. Session five focused on the theme environmental communication and climate change impacts, with an emphasis on how communities come to know, produce, and communicate environmental knowledge. It also addressed more complex issues, such as environmental justice and climate reparations, while highlighting the entrepreneurial aspects of climate change adaptation. The sixth session focused on environmental worldviews, oil, and vulnerabilities in the Niger Delta, and this was largely characterised by compelling engagement with poetry, literary texts, and performative traditions that captured how host communities experience and conceive of the trauma of ecological degradation. Drawing from traditional and contemporary fiction, presenters showed how the complex realities of ecological degradation and (in)justice permeate the everyday lives of community members. Sequel to the presentations at the conference, and rigorous in-house and external peer review, seventeen papers were accepted for publication in two separate Special Issues. Based on the disciplinary foci, eight of the selected papers, focusing on the political ecology of oil extraction, were published in the Niger Delta Research Digest, Journal of the Institute for Niger Delta Studies (INDS), Niger Delta University. Nine others, focusing on the growing environmental humanities, are contained in this Special Issue. Extractivism and the Environmental Cause In a private letter to William Boyd before his execution, Saro-Wiwa observes “I’ve used my talent as a writer to enable the Ogoni people to confront their tormentors. I was unable to do it as a politician or a businessman. My writing did it” (xv). This assertion unambiguously hangs out the extractive industry as the “tormentor” of the Niger Delta and vehemently reframes literary productions on the region not only as a social contract between the writer and society, but the collective’s assault rifle in the quest for environmental wellbeing. Taking this charge at surface value perhaps, Sule Egya has documented what he perceives as the surge in literary militancy in the Niger Delta, by which he apprehends the “poetics of activism to combat institutional powers that perpetrate slow violence leading to both spiritual and physical displacements” (8). Ushie, on his part, notes that “the Niger Delta literary landscape has continued to flourish even as its physical environment is wilting” (22). This chasm underlines the metaphorical transformation of the decaying Niger Delta environment into a fertiliser by literary scholars who spread the compost across their works. On the one hand, the poetic persona in Ojaide’s oeuvre expresses grief over the loss of the Niger Delta ecosystem, because “Shell broke the bond / with quakes and a hell / of flares” (“When Green Was the Lingua Franca” lines. 43-45b), which thus disrupted the region’s ecological balance. The regional griot expresses emotive nostalgia towards the water of the region that “still remembers the swimmer” (“I Took a Boat” l. 3c). Moreover, Sophia Obi feminises the Delta as an “aged whore / wrapped in gloomy attire” (“Oloibiri”, l. 4-5) who is relentlessly violated by zigzag pipelines across the bowels of the region. While Obari Gomba smokes out the postcolonial state as the oil thief who has sworn to annihilate the region “with guns / bought with oil money” (“The Confession of the Oil-Thief” l. 31-32), Nwagbara enjoins the region to shell Shell & Co. ablaze with incendiary shell… (l. 48-9). The thematic foci of these texts evoke Nayar’s notion of “ecoprecarity” and Butler’s idea of “precarious lives”, which underscore the “lives humans lead in the event of ecological disaster” (Nayar, 7) and could be possibly extended to a gradual ecological collapse as in the case of the Niger Delta. Moreover, the incendiary linguistic choices of the authors corroborate Iheka’s admonition on “rethinking postcolonial resistance” (88) in the Niger Delta context where language subverts civility and re-echoes the open political dissent in the region. These creative and theoretical interventions set the tone for the critical engagements presented in this Special Issue. In “Mimetic Designs in Chimeka Garricks’ Representation of Oil, Environment, and Coloniality of Power in Tomorrow Died Yesterday,” Okwudiri Anasiudu brings to the fore the real-time rollover of colonial practices in the Niger Delta. Through a close reading of Garricks’ deployment of irony and paradox in the novel, the author frames the postcolonial nation as a negation and a contradiction that is kept in place by colonially styled forms of violence that deplete planetary resources and exploit the people. Under such a matrix, the political hegemony abdicates its developmental responsibilities, gun-wielding freedom fighters turn on their subjects, and security personnel partake in the redistribution of ill-acquired wealth from kidnapping. Moreover, the author employs the allegory and synecdoche of “Asiama village” in the novel to unmask the multiple temporalities of unrest and exploitation of the region, stretching from the transatlantic slave trade to the contemporary reckless extraction of crude oil. Anasiudu proposes “re-ontology” as an analytical tool to understand the evolution of some Niger Delta subjects, but signals at a possible redemption of the region through a paradigm shift from retribution to inter/intra-species reconciliation. In “Spatial Negotiations: Anthropomorphism and the Niger Delta Landscape in Ebi Yeibo’s Poetry,” Oziomachukwu Ejechi et al., pursue a radical reimagining of the Niger Delta landscape by employing anthropomorphism to construct nature as both a witness and participant in socio-political resistance. While outsourcing a generous dose of affective agency to the environment, the authors envision the labyrinth beyond a residual site of ecological loss, and rearticulate the same as a hybrid ecological zone, an insurgent terrain, and a liminal space where the non-human embodies resistance, survival, and autonomy. Honing Ebi Yeibo’s poems, “Good Old Bomadi” and “White Soul”, O. Ejechi et al. reinstate the waterscapes of the region in their “mnemonic” capacities as archives holding affective memories of past lives, rituals, and joys. They suggest that anthropomorphism in the Niger Delta evokes an “eco-testimonial form,” where environmental memories confront both political lies and ecological collapse. In “Reframing Revolution: Cultural and Ecological Reclamation in G'Ebinyo Ogbowei’s Marsh Boy”, Adaobi Ejechi reframes the sweeping revolt in the Niger Delta region as a “deliberate, poetic act of cultural and environmental reclamation.” Upending the reactionary faction’s insurgency episteme in the region as a senseless and violent criminal enterprise, the author proposes a grasp of the Niger Delta “insurgency” as a “rupture” and a disavowal of state legitimacy with a view to reclaiming land, memory, and identity of the region. Interrogating Ogbowei’s Marsh Boy & Other Poems within Egya’s and Iheka’s concepts of “literary militancy” and “postcolonial ecocriticism”, A. Ejechi demonstrates how the formal strategies of the poems (enjambment, syntactic tensions, and tonal shifts) belie containment and echo the open political defiance in the region. Closing in on the poetic persona in Marsh Boy, she concludes that the poetic voice of the Niger Delta must be seen beyond a mere victim of environmental injustice. In this reading, it becomes an archivist of state violence and betrayal. In “Beyond Literary and Historical Documentations: Niger Delta Socio-Ecological Iniquities in King Dakolo’s The Riddle of the Oil Thief,” Sophia Obi explores the metafiction genre of Niger Delta literature. Through multiple temporal leaps – colonial to the postcolonial, palm oil to crude oil economies, as well as from the agitations of Adaka Boro to those of the so-called contemporary militants – the author anchors the plunder of the region’s resources on historical patterns of exploitation. Drawing analysis from Dakolo’s novel, the article duplicates the narrative voice in the Niger Delta as the story unfolds through the eyes of a multifaceted subject: a resident and victim of environmental pollution, a military proxy of the state stationed in the region to protect oil installations, and a community leader who owes his people a duty of care and protection. Against the dominant narrative that the prevalent oil theft in the region is perpetuated by local irate youths, the author avers that “oil thieves are not excluded from some highly placed personalities in society.” Moreover, the agitation is stated as a response to decades of elusive promises. The environmental injustice wrought by decades of oil drilling in the Niger Delta has inspired some of the most cutting-edge literary works of Nigeria. Ebidenyefa Charity Nikade analyses this protest literature from a linguistic perspective, unpacking its environmental narratives, speech acts, and metaphors. “Unravelling Environmental Narratives in Selected Poems of Ebi Yeibo’s A Song for Tomorrow and Wellington Nwogu’s The Yawning Earth”, argues that protest literature can give a voice to the marginalised, raise collective consciousness, stage resistance, and imagine alternative futures. Through the works of Ebi Yeibo and Wellington Nwogu, whose oeuvre blends protest and philosophical inquiry, Nikade demonstrates the power of language in the Niger Delta’s environmental struggle. The Niger Delta has attained some notoriety in public discourse: environmental pollution, illegal artisanal crude oil refineries, political corruption, and youth militancy. These realities, occasionally, enforce a journey down memory lane in search of a tranquil Niger Delta, if ever there was one. In “Investigating Past and Present Conditions of the Niger Delta Environment in Selected Poems of Tanure Ojaide’s The Tale of the Harmattan and In the House of Words,” Wellington O. Nwogu juxtaposes these temporalities. Drawing analysis from Ojaide’s Tale of The Harmattan and In the House of Words, the author foregrounds the unique interspecies relationship between locals and the rivers, as well as the soil and atmosphere of the region. Following the poetic persona, the author establishes the tranquillity of the Niger Delta in the past, projects the present as a season of anomy marred by desertification, toxic releases into rivers and the atmosphere, as well as a general breakdown of the human body. For the future, there is a collective appeal to the “Egbesu Boys” as forces of liberation from the neo-imperialism of multinational oil corporations in collusion with the postcolonial state. Jeta Amata’s iconic 2012 film Black November features women prominently. The activism of the protagonist Ebiere shows that Niger Delta women can play a decisive role in environmental justice struggles against oil multinationals. In “Oil, Gender, and Environmental Security in Black November: An Ecofeminist Perspective”, Joyce Onoromhenre Agofure takes these entanglements between oil and gender as her starting point. The ecofeminist framework reveals that women in the Niger Delta have been particularly disadvantaged by oil drilling and its attendant environmental degradation. By focusing on female characters, such as Hossana and Ebiere, Agofure illustrates the multiple positionalities Niger Delta women hold when it comes to accommodating, negotiating, and resisting oil. The film provides a powerful example of how environmental injustice can give rise to passionate – yet ultimately unsuccessful – resistance to patriarchal structures of resource extraction. Oil drilling in the Niger Delta is an activity dominated by men. Yet women are entangled with oil in numerous ways, whether as yam farmers whose yields are decimated by oil spills, as spiritual intermediaries or indeed as agents of resistance. In “Patterns of Women Protest in the Niger Delta Environmental Struggle, 1925-2012”, Ekine Euphemia Dumeayam and Mfon Umorem Ekpootu painstakingly trace historical forms of female environmental protest in the Niger Delta. From the Aba women’s war in 1929 to recent protests against oil drilling, Dumeayam and Ekpootu show that women hold great political power. Through seemingly mundane acts, such as singing, dancing, and stripping naked, women can make big political statements. Dumeayam and Ekpootu’s article is also an excellent example of how to conduct historical research in the Niger Delta by piecing together songs, oral traditions, interviews, and archival documents. While women only left scanty traces in the Niger Delta’s historical archives, understanding their actions and motivations holds important lessons for today’s environmental justice struggles. Images of devastating oil spills, such as in Bodo, have shocked international audiences through newspaper and television reporting. But also, within Nigeria, newspapers are often among the first to report on environmental wrongdoings. In his article “Media Framing Patterns of Dominant Environmental Issues in Nigeria’s Niger Delta in Selected Empirical Studies”, Christian Tuotamuno Diri argues that media framing patterns can significantly influence audience attitudes. Coverage of environmental issues also impacts public opinion and policymaking. Diri argues for research-based environmental coverage to foster understanding and appreciation of the environmental issues that the Niger Delta is facing. Such sustainable environmental reporting could ultimately contribute to more fitting policies and a better-informed public. Together, these articles highlight the variety of environmental humanities approaches to the oil question in the Niger Delta. While many artists have indeed chosen a socially engaged approach in their work, the ongoing environmental crisis in the region underscores the urgency of continuous activism to keep the Niger Delta environment habitable. Acknowledgements Research for this article and the editing of this Special Issue was funded by the European Union (ERC, AFREXTRACT, project number 101039920). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council. 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