The Devastating Toll of the
Petroleum Industry on Postcolonial Communities: An
Ecocritical Reading of Helon Habila’s Oil on Water
Mamadou Abdou Babou Ngom, Ph.D.
ABSTRACT
This research paper sets out to delve into the
human and environmental toll of the petroleum industry on
postcolonial communities, using Helon Habila’s Oil on Water as a
stepping-stone. The paper argues that decades after the end of the
straightjacket of colonization, Africa (which bore the brunt of that
gruesome enterprise of profit-driven dehumanization) continues to
reel from it. Key to teasing out the scope of the multifaceted
challenges facing postcolonial communities, not least those of black
descent, is a consideration of the earth-shattering human cum
environmental ravages of the oil industry. The violence resulting
from oil exploitation in parts of Africa endowed with mineral
resources has, so the article posits, spawned a bottomless pit of
environmental crisis whose consequences on human and nonhuman life
are nothing short of unfathomable. Little wonder that postcolonial
African literature has shifted from its time-honoured depiction of
racial injustice to gritty representations of environmentalism and
its attendant woes on formerly colonized communities. The burgeoning
phenomenon of armed militants with its retinue of kidnappings and
killings, oil slicks, atmospheric pollution – and suchlike - are
foregrounded as being dismal fallout from decades of unchecked,
undisguised, relentless, rapacious scramble for oil extraction.
Habila’s lead character, Rufus, is a journalist assigned along with
his seasoned colleague Zaq to do reporting about a kidnapped British
woman in the Niger Delta region. Their no-nonsense call to spotlight
the miseries of oil exploitation by bearding the lion in his den as
they seek to interview a notorious rebel commander about the
kidnapped woman has brought the best in journalism. Zaq and Rufus
have cheated death many times without throwing in the towel. The
harrowing scale of the devastation of their voyage to Irikefe Island
literally hits home. They hazards of the assignment are such that
they start questioning the soundness of their acceptance of it. The
paper argues that lack of political will, corruption, bribery and
graft compound the predicament of impacted communities who, as a
last desperate resort espouse armed militancy as the only off-ramp
to betterment. Methodology wise, I tap into a three-pronged approach
in my endeavour to do justice to the paper, namely close textual
analysis, ecocriticism as well as perspectives from the social
sciences cum postcolonial theory.
Keywords: postcolonial ecocriticism, oil extraction,
anthropocentrism, environment, resource curse, ecological
imperialism, place attachment.
