The media turn in African environmentalism: the Niger Delta and oil’s network forms

Abstract

African ecologies and the various media forms devoted to them remain marginal in the bourgeoning discourse of ecomedia studies despite the implication of the continent in mineral extraction, wildlife conservation, and the dumping of toxic wastes, just to mention a few examples. Turning to media focusing on Nigeria’s Niger-Delta region, the author argues that African cultural forms are crucial for extending the frontiers of ecomedia studies and for apprehending the perversities of oil culture. His analysis of a mural in Ireland’s Mayo County featuring the environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa (2005), the music video for Timaya’s ‘Dem Mama’ (2006), and Victor Ehikhamenor’s art installation, The Wealth of Nations (2015), shows that they deploy the visual in protesting the commodifying logic of oil extraction. This article adopts an infrastructural approach toward media as it underscores how oil consecrates the selected cultural objects as network forms. Focusing on African materials extends the geography and archive of ecomedia studies, but it has methodological implications too. The author orients scholarship in the environmental humanities toward working across media, encouraging the field to adopt ecological relationality as both the matter and the method.

Petro-politics, Gender Violence and Human Trafficking in Nigeria’s Niger Delta Region

“…The failure to address gender violence that fueled the structural conditions that put women at risk of human trafficking, such as in the oil extractive communities in the Niger Delta signifies a major gap in the efforts to combat trafficking by the Nigerian government. It also illustrates the contradictions in the efforts of the international community to combat human trafficking considering the "multiple social forces" including international actors, facilitating oil capitalism that result in environmental and gender violence for the poor communities, particularly women in extractive communities (Nixon, 2011;Babatunde, 2018;Iheka, 2021).…”

Oil exploitation and food insecurity in Nigeria's Niger Delta

“…More specifically, the detrimental consequences of oil exploration and production impoverished the poor communities in the Niger Delta, resulting in what Nixon (2011) describes as ‘the environmentalism of the poor’. In the Niger Delta, petro-capitalism also symbolises what Iheka (2021) calls ‘oil's materiality or the pervasiveness of oil culture’ that results in violence of oil degradation, disrupts the natural and cultural environment that sustains the inhabitants’ livelihoods and food security. The violence of oil capitalism erodes the right to food as one of the basic human needs and the food culture that is central to their cultural identity, wellbeing and existence.…”

“…The violence of oil capitalism erodes the right to food as one of the basic human needs and the food culture that is central to their cultural identity, wellbeing and existence. In fact, the Niger Delta has become synonymous with human rights violations, insecurity and cultural erosion, or to use Iheka's (2021) description, ‘oil and underdevelopment, and repressive violence’, are the rewards of Nigeria's petromodernity.…”