Representing the neocolonial destruction of the Niger Delta: Helon Habila’s Oil on Water (2011)

Abstract

This article examines the literary representation of the ecological, economic and social destruction of the Niger Delta in Helon Habila’s novel Oil on Water (2011). Although formally independent since 1960, Nigeria is still embedded in unequal neocolonial relationships under the guise of globalization. With its focus on one manifestation of neocolonialism, namely the extraction of oil, the novel can be placed in the context of petroculture, which foregrounds the global significance and impact that fossil fuels have on cultural and social imaginaries of the global North and South. Focusing on narrative perspective and structure, the article analyzes the way Oil on Water is constructed to explore the social and environmental consequences of the extraction of oil in the Niger Delta. The novel itself, highlighting as it does the role of the journalist as observer and witness, amounts to an act of literary activism, since it provides testimony concerning the destruction of the region.

Keywords:

• Helon Habila
• oil
• Niger Delta
• neocolonialism
• Nigerian novel
• petroculture