Kwara State University
Saeedat ALIYU
Designation: Senior Lecturer
Department: Linguistics African and European Languages
| My Publications | ||||||||
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| S/N | Title | Abstract | Authors | Volume Numbers | Publication Type | Publication Date | Link | |
| 1 | Narrative constructions of eco-disharmony in Niger Delta novels. |
Ecological concerns arising from mineral resource exploration in the Niger-Delta region of Nigeria are well documented in literary scholarship. This present study however seeks to take the documentation further. It explores the ways three selected novelists use narrative constructions as aesthetic to foreground ecological and social disharmony in texts that centralize ecological challenges in the Niger-Delta. The selected novels- Tanure Ojaide’s The Activist, Kaine Agary’s Yellow Yellow, and Helon Habila’s Oil on Water- are works that are seminal in documenting the petro-dollar induced environmental despoliation, destabilization of socio-economic balance, and militarization of the region. The framework for exploring the narrative constructions is based on three interrelated constructions. First is the investigation of the ways the selected authors construct ecological balance in the region. This includes exploring the anthropocentric inhibitions depicted through the indigenous people’s understanding of human and environmental needs which the introduction of crude oil exploration truncates. Second is the examination of the ways the authors construct resource exploration and the capitalist ideology central to multinational resource exploration that define activities in the region. Third is an evaluation of how the resultant social and environmental disharmonies are constructed in the three texts. This facilitates exploration of the revolt by the youth of the region; the militarization of the region; the violation of peoples’ basic rights; the catastrophic pollution of the water, land, and air in the region; and, the gradual extinction of both human and non-human life in the region. This study concludes that ways the authors’ foreground these issues contribute to the holistic depiction of a region in disharmony. Keywords: narrative construction, eco-disharmony, Niger-Delta, anthropocentricism, mineral resource exploration. | Aliyu, S.B. | ISBN: 978-0-367-68289-7 | The Literature and Arts of the Niger Delta. Ojaide, Tanure (University of North Carolina, USA) and Enajite Eseoghene Ojaruega (Delta State University, Abraka) (eds.) 183-192. Published by Routledge Contemporary Africa Series. | 2021-01-01 | ||