PETROPOLITICAL VICTIMIZATION OF NATIVE NIGERIANS: A CULTURAL MATERIALIST STUDY OF MBUE’S HOW BEAUTIFUL WE WERE AND HABILA’S OIL ON WATER

Abstract

The Niger Delta has long been a site of significant oil exploitation, and as such, has become a critical site of enquiry into the connections between natural resources, culture, and the environment. This research examines the politics of oil in Imbolo Mbue’s How Beautiful We Were and Helon Habila’s Oil on Water, which detail the socio-environmental predation of oil corporations. While a growing body of literature addresses the politics of oil in the Niger Delta substantially, less has been produced on the politics of oil in the Niger Delta in the context of Cultural Materialism. This is precisely the gap this research seeks to address: the interrelationship among the politics of oil, culture, the environment, socio-economic distress, and the formation of counter-hegemonic practices in the chosen novels. Employing a qualitative and interpretive methodology, this study uses and closely examines Raymond Williams’ Cultural Materialism, enabling it to pierce the power relations, cultural shifts, and the tangible circumstances embedded in the politics of oil. The study shows that destructive oil extraction results in suffering through vicious cycles of environmental devastation, economic impoverishment, and the displacement of people. The oil-dominant novels showcase different scales of resistance, from defiant individualism to collective organization, attesting to the strength and agency of the oppressed. This study demonstrates and reveals the quotidian realities of the oil-igbo in the Niger Delta and how they integrate the Niger Delta's social, cultural, and environmental realities into the predatory veins of global capitalism in international oil markets.