CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
Ecocriticism is a term used for the observation and study of the relationship between literature and the earth’s environment. It takes the interdisciplinary point of view by analysing the works of authors, researchers and poets in the context of environmental issues and nature. Since the scope, purpose and methodology are intertwined, it seems a bit challenging to have all ecocritics agree to this. However, some of them also propose the solutions to the current environmental issues.
The term ecocriticism was coined in the late 1970s by combining ‘criticism’ with shortened form of ‘ecology’, the science that investigates the interrelations of all forms of plants and animal life with each other and with their physical habitats. ‘Eco-criticism,’ also called environmental criticism or green studies, designates the critical writings which explore the relations between literature and the biological and physical environment, conducted with an acute awareness of the damage being wrought on that environment by human activities (Abrams and Harpham, 96).
Representation of the natural environment has always been the workings of literature. In the twentieth century, the warnings by scientists and conservationist increased; two especially influenced books were Aldo Leopold’s A Sand Country Almanac (1949), drawing attention to the ominous degradation of the environment, and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), concerning the devastation inflicted by newly developed chemical pesticides on wildlife, both on land and in water. As time went on, there was a widespread feeling that the earth was in an environmental crisis, brought about by man through his industrial chemical pollution of the ‘biosphere’ – the thin layer of the earth, water, air and life as a whole. This devastation is caused by the depletion of forests and of natural resources, the relentless extinction of plants and animal species, and the exploitation of the human population that threatened the capacity of the earth to sustain it.
Ecocriticism, therefore, makes environmental issues its focus, it became entrenched in the 1990s with the publication of The Eco-criticism Reader and Environmental Imagination (Lawrence Bull, 56). The approach has its basis on the environmental philosophy that makes nature and ecological issues its concern. Consequently, ecocriticism discourse explores the relationship between literature and the environment.
Environmental literature includes all writings about nature as well as other environmentally-induced interests. It is without any doubt that nature writing developed from the respect for the natural world and its centrality to human life. Nature is the totality of the processes of beings in the world, the entire earth and its ecological changes; what goes around comes around (David Hilbert, 87). Scholars agree that not just one approach can be adopted to tackle questions of the environment, in order to address issues that affect it in a holistic manner.
Colin Irvine is especially bothered that issues about land did not gain much space in the theoretical curriculum of literature. He asserts in his book, The Outlook that our educational and economic system is headed away from, rather than toward, an intense consciousness of the land (Irvine, 261). He foregrounds ecological principles in literature by likening the relationship between the reader and the text to that of man and his environment. Some scholars believe that eco-literature first evolved in the United State of America, as mankind’s response to the perilous deterioration of the earth as a result of human activities. Although environmental degradation is said to precipitate eco-literature, this literary form could be said to be as old as human existence. Gogoi posit that the human world and the physical environment are closely interlinked and that one is shaped by the other and therefore, the study of the representation of human-nature relationship is literature (1).
Over the years, there have been reports of great shift of the biosphere as man’s activities against the physical world or ecosystem go beyond repairs. Man has not been able to replenish the parts he has tapped from and as such, it begins to afflict man with the consequences. The revolution and milestone of eco-literature and criticism is said to be traceable to William Rueckert who was the first person to have used the term in his essay Literature and Ecology: An Experiment on Ecocriticism published in 1978.
Africa has not been exempted from the wave of environmental degradation that threatens to put nature into extinction. Africa had had its fair share of poisonous, pollution, river and ocean dehydration, global warming and landscape, lost especially resulting from multinational activities. The destructive activities and processes are not continuous but increasing in rate. While some of the impacts such as loss of biodiversity might be gradual, there are hosts of communities around the world today that are being consumed by coastal and gully erosion, sea-incursion, bush fires, among others, with lives and billions of dollars worth of property being lost. The reconstruction process accrues for much more money than that which would have maintained the processes. In as much as the developed countries of the world are able to effectually combat this destructive ecological consequences due to their access to technological and scientific knowledge and resources, there are other pressing challenges that are beyond their reach and control; the ozone layer weathering. The developing countries are totally at the mercy of nature with very low institutional capacity to respond to environmental threats. Vast lands are lost annually to sea incursion, gully erosion and desertification in developing countries.
In Africa, Nigeria is a typical example of a country contending with ecological issues. Apart from natural disasters, Nigeria has suffered more man-made threats than natural. Firstly, the huge population of the country alone leads the country to the issue of urbanisation. One of the negative effects of high urbanisation is massive waste generation resulting on threat to the quality of air and water. The age-long practice of shifting cultivation is an unavoidable factor of environmental degradation in Nigeria. the soil fertility declines, the farmer moves to another parcel of land, the population rate increases and hunger becomes the order of the day. Moreso, extensive exploration and production of petroleum in Nigeria’s sedimentary basins especially in the Niger-Delta area has opened such areas to massive pollution. There is the recurring threat of pollution from normal exploration and production activities such as leakages from pipelines and production platforms. The recent spate of activism in the Niger Delta region is as a result of tying a defense for the ecology and the means of livelihood of the Niger Delta. The struggle for survival in the Niger Delta aggravates the threat of poisonous environment and unproductive earth.
Agricultural activities have caused the continuous removal of significant areas of forest cover, the removal of parts of the earth and this has caused harm to man’s environment. There is no gain saying that most of the environmental friendly treaties that Nigeria is signatory to forbid or prohibit desert encroachment, animal maiming and hunting, deforestation and gas flaring. Agencies have been set up to build wildlife, protect animals rights and prohibit forest encroachment. These agencies have been empowered to make arrest and trial of culprits under international laws. Undoubtedly, the campaign to sustain the earth and rescue it from its numerous ecological issues has been further expounded by creative writers and literary critics. Writers have written on subject matters relevant to deforestation, desert encroachment, gas flaring, urbanization, industrialization, oil leakages, water pollution, land lost and pollution, erosion, animal right among others.
The Niger Delta people have experienced crises following the discovery, exploitation and exploration of oil in the Region. The crises in the Niger Delta therefore are yielding so much material for Nigerian literary artists. In 1956, petroleum was discovered in commercial quantity at Oloibiri in Bayelsa State and the production commenced in 1958. With the discovery of oil, the inhabitants of the Niger Delta region were jubilant and excited. Within a short time, the people observed how their environment was being damaged. Marine life was grossly affected, farmlands were polluted by oil spills, while gas flares affected and is still affecting the climatic condition as they release poisonous gasses into the atmosphere. The federal and state governments of Nigeria were unable to stem the tide environmental degradation despite the huge amount of money collected in form of taxes and loyalties from the oil companies.
The state in the South-south geopolitical zone which are the oil producing state receive 13 percent extra allocation of oil revenue disbursed monthly for the development of the Region apart from the statutory subvention from the federal government, yet the region lacks development. Despite the huge allocation granted to the states, corruption has been a major hindrance to the development in the Region. The economic disparity between the people whose source of livelihood were destroyed and those in government who benefit directly ken oil exploration is very wide. Most of the people languish in extreme poverty because their sources of livelihood which include farming and fishing have been destroyed.
To champion the cause of the people of the Niger Delta against exploitation and environmental degradation, some prominent revolutionaries include Isaac Boro, Sam Owonarv and Nottingham Dick who established an organisation known as the Integral WXYZ for the advancement of Ijaw cause in Nigeria. Another prominent figure in the Niger Delta crises is Ken Saro Wiwa who like his counterpart, Isaac Boro, opposed the Nigerian government over ethnic domination, corruption and environmental degradation. Ken Saro Wiwa led the Movement of the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) as their spokesperson and as president. Saro Wiwa used his career as a writer to present the plight of his people both at the local and international levels.
The oil producing areas of the Niger Delta states are worst hit by this exploitation which also has an untold impact on agriculture, food security, public health and fundamental human rights. The three major effects of oil exploration on host communities include: first, it leads to environmental pollution; second, the ecosystem is destroyed together with the lives of the people and lastly, it further impoverishes the cited oil producing communities (SegunDawodu, 3). The Nigerian government at different times has put in place institutional machineries and has made (and amended) laws in a bid to ensure safety of the citizens, a cleaner environment for its citizenry and to ensure proper compensations in case of infringements, all in line with the global practices. Two of such established institutions are the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (FEPA) (now ministry) and the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC). Among the various laws put in place by the government include Environmental Impact Assessment Decree No. 86, Oil (1990); Pipeline Act 1992; Oil in Navigable Water Act (LFN, 1990); Petroleum (Drilling and Production) for the pursuant of regulation in petroleum act of 1969 and many others (BalogunAdeyonju, 221-222).
Regrettably, majority of the laws and policies relating to pollution in Nigeria almost have failed, irredeemably in curbing the threats that necessitated their existence in the first place. Adeyanju has given a number of reasons for this: the unwillingness on the part of the government to enforce the provision of the law against violations, most of which are press agents or companies; oil multinational power and magnets on the part of the government institutions mandated to ensure regulation and prose environmental polluters, and the loopholes and ways of escape for polluters in the various existing laws relating to oil pollution (224). The resultant effects of the failure of the government and the oil companies multinational concerned agencies are evident in the problems of desertification, degradation of land and pollution faced by the Niger Delta states. This has compelled the government to embark on community project and development to embark on community project and development of capacity building initiatives so as to curb incessant militancy that the Niger Delta youths have embarked in, demanding some preparation and a restoration of their endangered communities.
Ecocritical analysis of selected poems in Imo Okon’s Echoes From The Mangrove and Martin Akpan’s Good Night Africa is a deliberate attempt to use certain literary theory to see how some injustices done to our society and indeed our environment by some unscrupulous elements. These two writers in their work tries to examine the ills done to nature and the society by the people who are supposed to keep and maintain it. Industrial fumes among other things emit from factories and industries in a bit for us to also become a developed nation has really caused much damage as well as the good it intends to our immediate environment and the world at large.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
The greatest problem facing the Niger Delta region today is the environmental issues. The Niger Delta crises today result from the environmental degradation as these affect the socio-political and economic lives of the people. Human beings rely on the ecosystem to supply food and other necessities for a healthy life. However, certain human activities have had a devastating impact on the ecosystem, from pollution to over harvesting, the danger in exploitation of wildlife and natural vegetation by humans have left the ecosystem in bad shape.
Many scholars have written about the injustices done to nature and the environment but large scale studies on ecological issues have not been conducted on Imo Okon’s Echoes from the Mangrove and Martin Akpan’s Good Night Africa. Etuk Ibanga (22 – 46), limited his attention to oil exploration and Niger Delta exploitation. Again, Ibekwe Ojor in an interview talked about the same issue as Etuk but also comment on the marginalisation of the real owners of the oil. However, this study examines environmental issues to man’s exploitation of nature, environment and fellow man which set off the cosmos balance and natural peace within the ecosystem. Also, there is need to unveil the socio-political and economic implication of the causes of environmental changes through textual analysis of selected poems in Imo Okon’s Echoes from the Mangrove and Martin Akpan’s Good Night Africa.
