Ecology, Extraction, and Cultural Crisis in Postcolonial African Literature: A Study of Helon Habila's Oil on Water and Kaine Agary's Yellow-Yellow

This paper undertakes an examination of how oil extraction in the Niger Delta does not merely constitute an ecological disaster but moonlights as a structurally produced process of cultural erasure which systematically dismantles the relationships Niger Delta communities share with their ecology, which helps them create their cultural identities, transmit collective memory, and organise communal life. Helon Habila’s Oil on Water and Kaine Agary’s Yellow-Yellow are read through an eclectic theoretical lens centred around decolonial ecology drawn principally from Malcolm Ferdinand’s Decolonial ecology theory and Robert Nixon’s Slow violence theory, which are philosophically underpinned by Frantz Fanon’s Ontology of land outlined in his seminal text, The Wretched of the Earth. The paper argues that the Niger Delta is presented as a space where extraction results in a double destruction of both the ecosystem and the cultural identities crafted around a symbiotic ecological relationship. A comparative analysis of both novels reveals that this destruction takes place at both an individual and communal level, with even distribution of consequences across gender lines. This paper adds to the emerging field of African decolonial ecocriticism and is part of a broader doctoral project that expands the comparative analysis to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o's Petals of Blood