Browsing by Author "Anyanwu, Patricia Ngozi"

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    Oil conflict and nationness in the Niger Delta: a review of crude realities in Helon Habila’s oil on water
    (U.P., 2020) Anyanwu, Patricia Ngozi; Dozie, Chinomso Patricia
    The discovery of oil in commercial quantity in the Niger Delta region in the 1950s was heralded with resounding joy. This was because of the anticipated resources which were expected to engender rapid human and infrastructural development of the region and Nigeria at large. Unfortunately, after over six decades of this discovery, the region remains perennially impoverished and underdeveloped amidst pervasive environmental degradation, displacement, and wanton dehumanization of the people. This unfortunate reality has continued to incite discontent as the people of this region relentlessly struggle for fairness and equity in the nation's scheme of things. Over the years, this struggle has assumed different currents, including kidnapping, illegal oil bunkering, peaceful and militant protests as well as pipeline blowouts and vandalism. These unfortunate realities have been variously expressed through literary creativities of many Nigerian writers, including Helon Habila. In Oil on Water, Habila paints a vivid picture of the individual and collective predicaments of these dispossessed people, as well as the conscious steps they have taken in order to retrieve their lost rights and entitlements from the Nigerian nation and her multinational oil company collaborators. Adopting HomiBhabha's Dissemination strand of the postcolonial theoretical framework, this paper examines how Helon Habila has deployed the technicalities of voice, action, character, setting and imageries in order to appeal to our sensibilities on the unfortunate individual and collective dispossession of the people of this devastated region. This is with the aim of lending our voice to the numerous calls on the Nigerian nation and her multinational oil company collaborators to shun humiliation, intimidation, rituality and annihilation of the people and consider dialogue and more humane alternatives in proffering an urgent development of the people and their region.