Oil in Nigerian Prose Fiction: a Study of Helon Habile’s Oil on Water and Kaine Agary’s Yellow Yellow
Chapter One
Aim and Objectives of Study
The aim of this study is to examine oil in Nigerian prose fiction using Helon Habila’s Oil on Water and Kaine Agary’s Yellow Yellow. The following objectives will strengthen the study:
- Examine the historical perspective of oil in Nigeria.
- Evaluatehow writers have explored the place of oil in Nigerian Literature.
- Carry out an eco-critical analysis of both texts in relations to oil in Nigeria.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
Historical Perspectives on Oil in Nigeria
The Niger Delta consists of the following states: Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo, Ondo, Imo and Rivers respectively. As of 1991, the National Census estimated that “about 25% of the entire Nigerian population lives within the Niger Delta region” [21]. They went further to report that the Niger Delta region has a steady growing population of approximately 30 million people as of 2005, accounting for more than 23% of Nigeria’s total population.
The British discovered oil in this region in 1956 and crude oil was discovered in commercial quantity by the Shell British Petroleum, which is now called Royal Dutch Shell at Oloibiri, a village in the Niger Delta and “in 1958 commercial production began with a production of about 6,000 barrels per day” [22]. The region has huge oil and gas reserves, and “ranks the sixth world’s largest exporter of crude oil and ranked as the third world’s largest producer of palm oil after Malaysia and Indonesia” [23].
Oil and gas from the region are the main source of revenue for the Nigerian state, accounting for about 97% of the country’s total export. Since the discovery of oil in the region, oil has dominated the country’s economy. The Niger Delta is highly susceptible to adverse environmental changes, occasioned by climate changes because it is located in the coastal region. Conclusive reports have stated that due to oil exploration and exploitation activities, the area has become an ecological wasteland. Ogoniland has witnessed recurrent social unrest during the past several decades over concerns related to oil industry operations, its revenue and petroleum related contamination. Although oil industry operations were suspended in Ogoni land in 1993, widespread environmental contamination remains. The effect of oil exploration in the region is negatively multifarious.
Since the discovery of oil in Nigeria in the 1950s, the country has been suffering the negative environmental consequences of oil development. The growth of the country’s oil industry, combined with a population explosion and a lack of enforcement of environmental regulations has led to substantial damage to Nigeria’s environment, especially in the Niger Delta region.
According to UNEP Report of 2005, when there is an oil spill on water, spreading immediately takes place. The gaseous and liquid components evaporate. Some get dissolved in water and even oxidize, and yet some undergo bacterial changes and eventually sink to the bottom by gravitational action. The soil is then contaminated with a gross effect upon the terrestrial life. As the evaporation of the volatile lower molecular weight components affect aerial life, so the dissolution of the less volatile components with the resulting emulsified water, affects aquatic life [24].
The harmful effects of oil spill on the environment are many. Oil kills plants and animals in the estuarine zone. Oil settles on beaches and kills organisms that live there; it also settles on ocean floor and kills benthic (bottom-dwelling) organisms such as crabs. Oil poisons algae, disrupts major food chains and decreases the yield of edible crustaceans. It also coats birds, impairing their flight or reducing the insulative property of their feathers, thus making the birds more vulnerable to cold. Oil endangers fish hatcheries in coastal waters and as well contaminates the flesh of commercially valuable fish.
In the Nigerian coastal environment a large areas of the mangrove ecosystem have been destroyed. The mangrove was once a source of both fuel wood for the indigenous people and a habitat for the area’s biodiversity, but is now unable to survive the oil toxicity of its habitat. Oil spills in the Niger Delta have been a regular occurrence, and the resultant degradation of the surrounding environment has caused significant tension between the people living in the region and the multinational oil companies operating there. It is only in the past decade that environmental groups, the Federal Government, and the foreign oil companies operating in the Niger Delta began to take steps to mitigate the impacts. Large areas of the mangrove ecosystem have also been destroyed. The mangrove forest was in the past a major source of wood for the indigenous people. In some places it is no longer in a healthy state to sustain this use [25]. The Idoho oil spill traveled all the way from Akwa Ibom state to Lagos state dispersing oil through the coastal states, up to the Lagos coast. This culminated in the presence of sheen of oil on the coastal areas of Cross river state, Akwa Ibom state, Rivers state, Bayelsa state, Delta state, Ondo state and Lagos state. In many villages near oil installations, even when there has been no recent spill, an oily sheen can be seen on the water, which in fresh water areas is usually the same water that the people living there use for drinking and washing. In April 1997, samples taken from water used for drinking and washing by local villagers were analyzed in the U.S. A sample from Luawii, in Ogoni, where there had been no oil production for four years, had 18 ppm of hydrocarbons in the water, 360 times the level allowed in drinking water in the European Union (E.U.). A sample from Ukpeleide, Ikwerre, contained 34 ppm, 680 times the E.U. standard [26].
CHAPTER THREE
THE PLACE OF OIL IN NIGERIAN LITERATURE
Introduction
Writers have tried to mirror the situations surrounding oil explorations in the country in a bid to affect changes in the Delta region, and this has been captured in virtually all the genres off literature known to man. This section examines how Nigerian literary artists have presented the case of oil in Nigeria as it affects the people and their physical environment.
Oil in Drama
The Niger Delta is Nigeria’s economic umbilical cord. It is the hub of her social life and the fulcrum of its political existence. Indeed, her very soul. But this exists, paradoxically, on the margins or fringes of Nigeria’s national life courtesy of perennial institutional and state neglect. It is in reaction to this spectre of paradoxes that the poet, Tanure Ojaide (2005) as cited in [38 ]observes that one of the Delta towns, “Ughelli at a time supplied power, which electrified the rest of Nigeria, while it went without light!” [39]. Yet it is this area that produces the bulk of the wealth of the land. It is also this area that, like an oracle with awesome, omniscient augury powers, defines and divines Nigeria’s future and destiny. In the last score of decades, the exploratory activities of multinational oil cartels led by the Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, Elf, etc have devastated, violated and laid waste this once virgin, fecund land. The once calm, collected creeks have been dammed and damned. The ancient, heaving swamps have run out of life having been asphyxiated. The ageless running streams, the graceful estuaries and the undulating rivers are now stagnant pools that only flow with the laziness and putrefaction of a flood of blood, and a deluge of spilled oil. The same oil has sealed a similar fate for the garrison of fishes that once coursed the depths of these fresh and refreshing creeks, streams and rivers.
CHAPTER FOUR
OIL AND ENVIRONMENT IN THE NIGERIAN NOVEL
Oil and Environment in Helon Habila’s Oil on Water
The negative effect of oil on the environment is copiously captured in Oil and Water where the oil that should have become the pride of the people of the Niger Delta has suddenly turned into a curse to their aquatic and terrestrial habitats. Even the aerial environment is not left out as the air is polluted due to activities of gas flaring which have contaminated the environment and makes it completely unhealthy to living things. The degradation of the environment affects everyone and everything living within and around it to the point that there seems to be no difference in the environmental outlook of the Niger Deltan communities as everything has been polluted from the activities of oil explorations. Habila describes this environmental situation thus;
CHAPTER FIVE
CONCLUSION
In this study, our focus was to examine oil in Nigerian prose fiction using Helon Habila’s Oil on Water and Kaine Agary’s Yellow Yellow. The study specifically was aimed at examining the historical perspective of oil in Nigeria, evaluate how writers have explored the place of oil in Nigerian Literature, and carry out an eco-critical analysis of both texts in relations to oil in Nigeria. The study adopted eco-criticism theory and Content Analysis approach in exploring the place of oil in Nigerian prose fiction. The data for this research is Helon Habila’s Oil on Water and Kaine Agary’s Yellow Yellow. Every page of both texts that touches on the issues surrounding the impact of oil in Nigeria will be examined.
The study also made use materials from journal articles, periodicals, literary texts, and internet surfing that will be relevant for this research will be consulted for review of literatures.
The study revealed that the Niger Delta region of Nigeria is rich in crude oil otherwise known as black gold. This singular factor has made this region a cause celebre and a hotbed of trouble in the Sub-Saharan region. The region is bedeviled with ecological problems. The discovery of oil in the region has affected agriculture, fishing as well as the living conditions of the people.
The history of oil exploration and production in the Niger Delta is a long, complex and often painful one that to date has become seemingly intractable in terms of its resolution and future direction. It is also a history that has put people and politics and the oil industry at loggerheads rendering a landscape characterized by a lack of trust, paralysis and blame, set against a worsening situation for the communities concerned. The reality is that decades of negotiations, initiatives and protests have ultimately failed to deliver a solution that meets the expectations and responsibilities of all sides. This complex situation has been described by James Tar Tsaaior as “paradoxical.” For several seasons now, the Niger Delta has been writhing in throes. It is still writhing in throes. And it will, perhaps, continue to writhe in throes; perhaps, perpetually. Reasons exist for these seasons of throes. Agary’s Yellow-Yellow is a literary enterprise whose main thrust is to expose further the socio-economic predicament of the people as well as explore the debilitating effect of poverty on the feminine psyche. Helon Habila’s concerns generally center on the need to find lasting solutions to the Niger Delta problems confronting the country. This underlies the commitments of both writers to the corrective role of literature in society.
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