The Boko Haram Kidnappings and Islamist Militancy In Nigeria: An Ecocritical Analysis of Habila’s The Chibok Girls

Abstract

Ecocriticism, a study of literature in relation to the environment has become one of the tools post-colonial writers use in addressing environmental concerns. The environment is seen as a character acting along with humans in literary texts. A violation of nature therefore affects all the characters. The urgency for examining literature from an ecological angle is therefore justified. Anchored on ecocriticism, this paper adopts a qualitative method analysis to argue that corruption, coups d’état and the activities of terrorists create a hostile environment that needs serious discourse engagement. This paper discusses the environmental issues raised in Habila’s The Chibok Girls: The Boko Haram Kidnappings and Islamist Militancy in Nigeria. The study concludes that the Nigerian environment, and by extension the African one, is at the brink of destruction because there is a causal relationship between corruption, coups d’état, terrorism and ecophobia. The first one breeds the others.