Grappling with Slow Violence in Isidore Okpewho’s Tides

In the epigraph to Rob Nixon’s Slow Violence and Environmentalism of the Poor are two very incisive statements. One of such statements is by Arundhati Roy which reveals the negative influences of globalization and how it reinvents the social problem of otherness and imperialism in modern time. The other is the colonialist vision of Lawrence Summers, former President of World Bank who advocated for the exportation of these nation’s garbage, toxic wastes and even polluting industries to Africa. These two statements provoke the notion of slow violence as postulated by Rob Nixon. In this essay, attention will be paid to how a literary writer like Isidore Okpewho reflected Rob Nixon’s notion of slow violence in his texts in order to create the understanding that will expose readers to the attritional violence ongoing in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria and the need to bring to an end this gradual loss. The study concludes that there are unacknowledged ecological ruins and that crude violence will be counter-productive and will not translate into the needed change.