Nigeria: Delta Oil Exploration Politics and the Portrayal of Brutal Impact in Yerima’s Hard Ground

Self Cite

This study examines the aesthetics, efficacy, and propriety of the embedded metaphors in characterization, music, and colour application as creative vision in projecting victimhood atmosphere around traumatized Niger-Deltans due to many years of deprivation in Blood and Oil. Thus, this study explains how Blood and Oil represents a credible narrative, subsuming polemics of environmental degradation, health misery, massive unemployment, subjugation, and violent restiveness in Niger Delta due to poor political leadership, greed, and corruption. On creative vision, we are discussing how the ingenious application of characterization, music, and colour combined effectively in creating an enduring mood for the scenes in the film as channels of accentuating intended messages. To add relevant scholarly rigor, we applied victimhood theory and interpretive discuss approach to create relevant and lucid insights regarding the inclinations and actions of select characters in the film as well as analysis of relevant secondary texts. In the end, we deduce that the apt portrayal of Niger-Delta oil communities’ extensively degraded and polluted environment validates the reality of anguish and victimhood because of the massively diminished fishing and farming prospects. Lastly, the implication of this scenario is increased unemployment, psychological distress, diseases, and violent restiveness which have reduced enormously the wellbeing of Niger Delta inhabitants.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 60%

Victimhood, Health Challenges and Violent Restiveness in Blood and Oil: Music, Characterization and Colours as Metaphors

Nwaozuzu¹,

Adeogun²,

Ezeugwu³

et al. 2021

Self Cite

“…As documented by Nwilo and Badejo, (2006), the 8 Monumental Inhumanity beyond Tears: Lamentations of Despoil in Nagaland and Niger Delta Eco-poetics "total production from Nigeria's oil fields in Niger Delta region increased from 308 million barrels in 1970 to 703,455 million barrels in 1991 and production peaked in 1980s when the total output was 753.5 million barrels per annum, out of which 93% was exported overseas" (Nwaozuzu et al 2020). Furthermore, "though the GDP ratio contribution of oil and gas dropped significantly from average of 37% to 40% achieved in 1980s, 1990s and beyond, to an average of 12% in 2000s, it has delivered from the 1970s to 2019 more than 70% of foreign exchange for Nigeria" (Nwaozuzu et al 2020). Consequently, between 2000 and 2004, oil and gas accounted for 75% of total government revenues, and 97% of foreign exchange earnings (Ukiwo, 2009).…”

Section: Niger Delta South-south Nigeriamentioning

confidence: 96%

“…(3). As of December 2021, Niger Delta is composed of 9 out of 36 states in Nigeria, (Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo, Ondo, Imo and Rivers), and it has 185 out of 774 local government areas (see Nwaozuzu et al 2020). As documented by Nwilo and Badejo (2006), "the strategic polito-economic importance of Niger Delta revolves around the fact that nearly all of Nigeria's proven oil and gas reserves and a total of 159 oil fields and 1481 wells in operation are located in the region" (Nwaozuzu et al 2020).…”

Section: Niger Delta South-south Nigeriamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As of December 2021, Niger Delta is composed of 9 out of 36 states in Nigeria, (Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo, Ondo, Imo and Rivers), and it has 185 out of 774 local government areas (see Nwaozuzu et al 2020). As documented by Nwilo and Badejo (2006), "the strategic polito-economic importance of Niger Delta revolves around the fact that nearly all of Nigeria's proven oil and gas reserves and a total of 159 oil fields and 1481 wells in operation are located in the region" (Nwaozuzu et al 2020). As documented by Nwilo and Badejo, (2006), the 8 Monumental Inhumanity beyond Tears: Lamentations of Despoil in Nagaland and Niger Delta Eco-poetics "total production from Nigeria's oil fields in Niger Delta region increased from 308 million barrels in 1970 to 703,455 million barrels in 1991 and production peaked in 1980s when the total output was 753.5 million barrels per annum, out of which 93% was exported overseas" (Nwaozuzu et al 2020).…”

Section: Niger Delta South-south Nigeriamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As documented by Nwilo and Badejo (2006), "the strategic polito-economic importance of Niger Delta revolves around the fact that nearly all of Nigeria's proven oil and gas reserves and a total of 159 oil fields and 1481 wells in operation are located in the region" (Nwaozuzu et al 2020). As documented by Nwilo and Badejo, (2006), the 8 Monumental Inhumanity beyond Tears: Lamentations of Despoil in Nagaland and Niger Delta Eco-poetics "total production from Nigeria's oil fields in Niger Delta region increased from 308 million barrels in 1970 to 703,455 million barrels in 1991 and production peaked in 1980s when the total output was 753.5 million barrels per annum, out of which 93% was exported overseas" (Nwaozuzu et al 2020). Furthermore, "though the GDP ratio contribution of oil and gas dropped significantly from average of 37% to 40% achieved in 1980s, 1990s and beyond, to an average of 12% in 2000s, it has delivered from the 1970s to 2019 more than 70% of foreign exchange for Nigeria" (Nwaozuzu et al 2020).…”

Section: Niger Delta South-south Nigeriamentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Monumental Inhumanity beyond Tears: Lamentations of Despoil in Nagaland and Niger Delta Eco-poetics

Okeke¹,

Aniago²,

Igbokwe³

et al. 2022

Self Cite

This paper examines the social interventions, inclinations and paradigms in Temsula Ao’s poem “My Hills” and Tanure Ojaide’s poem “Delta Blues” as reflections and interrogation of deplorable human actions propelling the degradation eco-heritage in Nagaland Northeast India, and Niger Delta south-south Nigeria. Thus, our focus will be on how both poets present similarities in their lamentations and advocacy against monumental inhumanity destroying natural environment. Therefore, drawing from the concepts of eco-criticism, this paper examines nuance of advocacy and interrogation of the direct/indirect complicity and disinterest subsumed in the shades of actions and inactions of both ‘insiders’ and ‘others’ who are in many ways, interwoven in the social malaises and negativities Ao and Ojaide project. To add rigor to the analysis, this paper adopts ‘eco-criticism’, to discuss the portrayal of social identity questions, environment despoil, and the subsisting human/environment symbiosis in Nagaland and Niger Delta as portrayed in the selected poems. In the end, the study observes that the selected poems are advocacy texts subsumed in nuances of social intervention paradigms that project certain universal commons reflective of inhabitants of regions in despoil and environment degradation.

Victimhood Self-construal, Irony of Tears and Melancholy amid Wealth: Critical Assessment of Select Literary and Visual Metaphors on the Niger Delta Environmental Despoilment

Igwenagu,

Ugwu,

Eze

et al. 2023

Studies on self-construal indicate that man is propelled by what happens around him to react in a certain manner and this reaction, we suggest is a human universal common and a representation of conscious purposive response to concomitant environmental and circumstantial realities. This purposive response encapsulates messages, which an observer articulates and interprets; hence, our study is about deepening our understanding of the factors and variables responsible for victimhood self-construal projected in select texts on the Niger Delta environmental despoilment. Drawing from the theories of eco-criticism, victimhood, and self-construal, this study utilizes an interpretive approach to discuss select instances of victimhood portrayals in the poem ‘Delta Blues’ by Tanure Ojaide, in the drama Hangmen also Die by Esiaba Irobi and in the film Blood and Oil, directed by Curtis Graham. The study examines the primary reason, which is the dispossession of livelihood by environmentally destructive oil exploitation, adduced by the Niger Delta inhabitants to understand how it generates variables that instigate victimhood self-construal. Our observation is that in the texts the inhabitants’ victimhood self-construal can be described as purposive, the propelling variable is their concomitant environmental realities and the texts as communication media have different encumbrances and advantages regarding their efficacy and utility for advocacy.