ABSTRACT
The global focus on the environment has been on the increase since the turn of the twenty-first century. This is as a result of the degradation and despoliation of the ecosystem by man. It is one of the concerns that has also received great attention in the Nigerian imaginative writings of authors who are reacting to the tension in some communities experiencing environmental crises. The destruction of the environment, especially in the country's oil rich Niger-Delta region, is a case in point. Some Nigerian writers have variously attempted to capture such issues of the environment and the implication of its abuse on human existence and the society at large. They equally consider various socioeconomic and political issues underlying the environmental crises in the country. This chapter explores Helon Habila's creative response to the pressure on the environment in the Niger Delta in his novel Oil on Water in order to reveal its implications on the socioeconomic and political lives of the inhabitants of the region and the country at large. It then adopts Ecocriticism as its theoretical framework. It x-rays the environmental crises in the region as portrayed by the novelist and finds oil theft and bunkering, vandalism, kidnapping, militancy, poverty, diseases and death as implications on the region and the country. The chapter ultimately concludes that Oil on Water is relevant literary material to Ecocritical study.
