“The Sustainability Reporter”
Sustainability and unsustainability in Helon Habila’s Oil on Water
Marc Stoehr ENGC93
Supervisor: Nicklas Hållén
Abstract
Helon Habila left Nigeria for the first time to receive the Caine prize in England in 2001 (The Guardian) and was at the time still working as a journalist. The narrator of his Novel Oil on Water (2011) is also a journalist. Rufus is a journalist seeking the truth. The purpose of this essay is to show how unsustainability manifests itself in Helon Habila's Oil on Water.
Unsustainability is either economic, a form of neocolonialism, or ecological in Habila's novel. I use economic, neocolonialist and ecocritical references and theories to illustrate my interpretation of Oil on Water and to show that Habila denounces all the previously
mentioned forms of unsustainability. In pursuing this aim I finally evoke potential ideas that could lead to the path of a more sustainable future for the Niger Delta.
Sustainability, which is defined as “the use of natural products and energy in a way that does not harm the environment” and the “ability to continue and be continued for a long time”
(Oxford Learner's Dictionaries online) is a central concept in my reading of Helon Habila's novel Oil on Water. The reader follows the protagonists Rufus and Zaq through the Niger Delta while tracking the kidnapped Isabel Floode, where the disastrous effects of the oil industry on the surroundings become increasingly visible for every chapter. Habila paints with painstaking details the destruction caused by the oil industry. The oil companies are supporting both the corrupt federal government with bribes and the militants that call
themselves “freedom fighters'' with money to entice them to sabotage other oil networks than their own. The local inhabitants, the reader learns, are caught in the middle, forced to take a side or to simply flee for their lives. If the brutality of the officers or the militants does not kill them, the growing pollution of the soil, the air and the water from the factories' dumps, the leaking pipes and the flares likely will. The fact that Habila chooses this setting for his story, which on a basic level could be described as a rather conventional adventure story, can be seen as a political statement about the unsustainability brought by the oil companies and an intervention into the global debate about the adverse effects of capitalism on the
environment. I therefore argue that an analysis of the forms of sustainability (and
unsustainability) present in the novel allows a deeper understanding of the system denounced by Habila.
Habila uses the kidnapping plot at the centre of the narrative to present the disastrous effects of the extraction and refinement of crude oil. In this novel, Rufus, the narrator, is a young journalist who gets the opportunity to follow the once famous and now disillusioned alcoholic reporter Zaq. Once a villager living in the Niger Delta, Rufus is the witness of the quick changes of this region experienced by the discovery of oil in 1958. Zaq and Rufus are both recruited to find the kidnapped wife of a British oil engineer, James Floode. Along their journey through the Niger Delta, they see how the toxic waste, the pipes and the flares affect both nature and population. They experience first-hand the violence of the military and the militants, who kidnap people in the delta as part of their fight against the oil companies and government forces that protect them. However, it is important to note that those effects are not solely visible in the degradation of the ecological system in the Niger Delta but also in the degradation of the economic conditions of its inhabitants. Habila's novel shows how bereft they are of the very means of surviving they had so far at their disposal. Furthermore Habila shows how the petrodollars have the inherent ability to corrupt anyone coming in contact
with them. Nobody is left unaffected: military, militants, villagers, doctors and nurses, drivers and servants, even (to a certain extent) Rufus. All are affected by their greed.
The aim of this essay is to show that the lack of sustainability presented by Habila in this novel is a political statement against the oil companies and the government backing them and against the militants that use the pollution caused by the oil companies as an excuse to threaten and mistreat the villagers and to kidnap westerners and ransom them. I therefore argue that an analysis of the forms of sustainability (and unsustainability) present in the novel allows a deeper understanding of the entire system denounced by Habila. The coming
analysis will analyse the economic unsustainability, the lack of sustainability brought by the neocolonialism of the oil companies, and the overall ecological unsustainability present in the novel. Lois Tyson's Critical Theory Today (2001) will be the starting point introducing my analysis of economy and neocolonialism, and Solomon Adedokun Edebor will lend us his ecocriticism for my analysis of the ecological unsustainability. Several ideas inspired by Habila's novel can finally be suggested as potential sustainable solutions.
Unsustainability is shown in Oil on Water by how the villagers are attracted by the consumerism made possible by globalisation. Different things available on the market (or commodities) have different values. In Capital Marx draws the line between use value and exchange value: “As use values, commodities are, above all, of different qualities, but as exchange values they are merely different quantities, and consequently do not contain an atom of use value. (Marx, 48) The use value of iron depends solely on the specific uses of iron due to its specific physical qualities and its exchange value depends on the quantity of iron we need to trade it against something else (gold, for example). There is furthermore another dimension of exchange value called sign-exchange value that differs from Marx’
definition of exchange value. Sign-exchange value is the value of an object according to the social status or prestige given by this object: “From a Marxist perspective, because the survival of capitalism, which is a market economy, depends on consumerism, it promotes sign-exchange value as our primary mode of relating to the world around us” (Tyson, 60) Villagers owning electronics and western cars bought by the oil companies’ money appear to be rich and their new status given by the sign-exchange value of those items is tempting other villagers to follow their footsteps. In Habila’s novel, some villagers of the Niger Delta want the televisions, video recorders, video games and the cars that become available to them as an effect of the petrodollars offered by the oil companies to buy their village. This is illustrated
by Chief Ibiram (a villager chief of the Niger Delta that finally decides with the members of his village to leave his village because of the threats of both the government officials
representing the oil companies and the violence of the militants), telling the story of his Uncle, chief Malabo, to Rufus and Zaq. He tells them that the oil men and the politicians have offered “to buy the whole village, and with the money … they could relocate elsewhere and live a rich life.” (Habila, 38-39). Some villagers hope that the oil companies find some oil on their soil and want to buy their villages, but Chief Malabo declined the oil companies' offer because he is aware that his neighbours are not better off with this money: “And just look at the other villages that had taken the oil money: already the cars had broken down, and the cheap television and DVD players were all gone. And where was the rest of the money?
Thrown away in Port Harcourt bar rooms or on second wives and funeral parties” (Habila, 39) When the cars bought by the oil money break down, only then the villagers slowly realize that the same can be said of their village. Chief Ibiram admits that the villagers actually do not even have a real choice in this matter as he continues to tell the story of Chief Malabo to the reporters: “Chief Malabo was arrested, his hands tied behind his back as if he were a petty criminal on charges of supporting the militants… but the lawyer said, if the elders would consent to the oil company's demands, sell the land...” (Habila, 40) Their very subsistence, the fertility of their soil, the fish feeding them from the Niger Delta, the purity of the air they breathe is thus taken away from most of the villagers, whether they want it or not. The few villagers who understand this process and refuse the money of the oil companies are framed by the corrupt government for crimes that they did not commit in order to be forced to sell their soil anyway. The villagers of the Niger Delta are thus placed in a deadlock in Oil on Water: willingly or not, they are the pawns of a system meant to remove them from the Niger Delta. The aggressive oil companies are merciless to the villagers, sending them away to become the new proletarians. The only thing they have left is their ability to offer physical labour against payment as they can no longer subsist from their own fishing and cultivating.
Though Abuja is Nigeria's capital, Lagos is Nigeria's largest city by far and in the novel this unwelcoming host is where most of the youth place their future hopes, but in Lagos, you cannot rely on your social standing and family background to be saved from ruin.
If you cannot find a way to sell your labour there, you will end up prostituting yourself on Bar Beach: “Lagos doesn't care how respectable you were in your village. Hey this was Lagos. They ended up as prostitutes on Bar Beach” (Habila, 121). This is thus another reality for the villagers brought by the fast development of capitalism in the Nigeria that is portrayed
in the novel: prostitution, rape and sometimes the murder of village youth ending on Bar Beach. I would therefore agree with Solomon Adedokun Edebor when he goes as far as naming it “the Rape of a Nation” in his essay about Oil on Water. In Oil on Water, the oil companies either fool the villagers or take by force what they want. The sole winners of the huge profits brought by the petrodollars are the oil companies and the corrupt government.
The rest of the Nigerians are metaphorically “raped” or at least the Niger Delta is. Describing what happens to the villagers as the consequences of the extreme capitalism of the oil
companies, Habila is making a political statement. The situation cannot go on this way. When it comes to the inhabitants of the Niger Delta, Oil on Water shows the reader that this
situation is simply not sustainable.
In the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, Royal Dutch Shell, an Anglo-Dutch oil company, has destroyed farmers' land, forestland, and fish populations through the unchecked dumping of petroleum waste, frequent oil spills due to corroded pipelines, and natural gas emissions that result from gas extraction. Local residents receive no benefit whatsoever from the presence of the oil industry on their land, but they are the ones who suffer the consequences of that presence: the air is no longer fit to breathe, much of their land will no longer produce agricultural crops, the local fish population has all but disappeared, and their water is no longer drinkable. As Amnesty International points out, this kind of pollution and environmental damage, which has been ongoing since the 1950s, had resulted in human rights violations, including the violation even of the local residents' right to their own food and water. (Tyson, 411)
This striking passage resonates with Oil on Water, and gives Habila's story a different perspective. If Habila’s fiction is inspired by facts, then Habila (as a Nigerian and a former reporter himself) has reasons to be upset about the oil companies destroying the Niger Delta.
This passage from Tyson, written about ten years before the publication of Oil on Water, gives a concrete example of the concept of neocolonialism when she explains postcolonial theory in Critical Theory Today. Tyson presents the oil companies in Nigeria as a typical example of neocolonialists: “Neo – that is, new – colonialism consists of the exploitation of the cheap labor available in developing countries, often at the expense of those countries' own struggling businesses, cultural traditions, and ecological well-being.” (Tyson, 410)
According to my reading of Oil on Water, this is exactly what the oil companies are doing in Habila's fiction and, according to Tyson, this is also what is happening in reality. The fact that the villagers are used as cheap labour is actually what the oil companies need in order to grow. As Max Weber points out in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism:“the presence of a surplus population which it can hire cheaply in the labour market is a necessity for the development of capitalism” (Weber, 29). Even if Nigeria officially ceased to be a British colony in 1960, this does not imply that the superiority complex of the former colonising nation vanished after independence. A clear sign of this colonial relation in Habila's novel is given through James Floode himself, as he expresses the voice of the oil-companies:
- Such great potential. You people could easily become the Japan of Africa, The USA of Africa, but the corruption is incredible.
I said nothing, looking to the door to see if the maid was coming in answer to Floode’s ring. He warmed to his topic, scratching his chin vigorously as he spoke.
- Our pipelines are vandalized daily, losing us millions… and millions for the country as well. The people don’t understand what they do to themselves…
- But they do understand. (Habila, 107)
It is an example of what Lois Tyson calls the colonialist discourse, a discourse “based on the colonizer’s assumption of their own superiority” (Tyson, 400). James is really convinced that Nigerians, who are referred to as “you people” (Habila, 107) are short-sighted as they
vandalize the pipelines and greatly reduce the oil-companies’ benefits and thus indirectly reduce their own profits from the petrodollars. In one single answer - “But they do
understand” - Rufus dismisses James’ whole tirade. The villagers do understand exactly what is going on. They do not make the situation worse for themselves because they lack
intelligence as James seems to imply. They are fully aware of the consequences of the pipes going through their soil. They see the impact of the flares both on the environment and on the people living in their vicinity and this is precisely why they sabotage it. They either try to put a stop to an unsustainable process or simply try to survive stealing oil from the pipes, as it is now impossible for them to grow anything in their polluted soil.
Another relevant aspect of neocolonialism is presented through the character Koko, she is James’ maid and secret lover, bearing his child, but was originally a student engaged to his driver. She willingly stopped her studies that gave her the promise of a better future in order to become the white engineer’s servant. James’ ringing his bell to order Koko for refreshments shows the difference of their social status in a striking way. The most
interesting part in their relationship is still to come: “ I saw his left hand almost absently but gently brush against her thigh, and if she hadn't turned and flashed him a quick smile, I would have dismissed the gesture as an innocent accident” (Habila, 108-109). Koko is not only selling her labour as a servant to James. She also sells her body. She was engaged to James' driver, but breaks her engagement after she gets pregnant with James' child (Habila, 110).
This also shows that she has ambitions. She is trying to take Isabel's place at James' side. The question about the type of labour she is being paid for in James' house remains. Should she be considered as James' servant, James' new partner or James' private prostitute? The fact that neither James nor Koko talk about abortion, that James himself says “she is expecting our child” (Habila, 110) and that later James later admits that he planned a separation with Isabel (Habila, 110) tends to indicate that both James and Koko care for each other. The only sad note to this romance appears to be that the main hopes of social promotion for young Nigerians in the novel seem to either work (one way or another) for the oil companies or to marry someone already working for the oil companies.
Habila presents thoroughly the condescending attitude of the western engineer toward the villagers in his fiction. The villagers’ only future in Oil on Water is to give up their own home and their independence in order to hope for either a dirty unqualified job offered by the oil companies or to become the servants of the westerners. My analysis of Oil on Water brings me to the understanding that this could be revealing of the author’s purpose: by presenting in detail a vicious and predetermined system, Habila’s aim could be to denounce its injustice through Rufus' eyes, the eyes of a reporter. In this fiction everything is polluted:
the air, the soil, the water. It is not only dangerous to swim in the blue grey water, it is also life threatening to simply breathe the air around the flares. This point is best expressed by Doctor Dagogo-Mark, a doctor who takes samples of water close to the flares:
I did my duty as their doctor. I told them of the dangers that accompany that quenchless flare but they wouldn't listen. And then a year later, when the livestock began to die, and the plants began to wither on their stalks, I took samples of the
drinking water and in my lab, I measured the level of toxins in it: it was rising, steadily. In one year it has grown to almost twice the safe level. Of course the people didn't listen, they were still in thrall to the orange glare. When I confronted the oil workers, they offered me money, and a job. (Habila, 92)
The region’s oil politics are not only killing the villagers, they are killing the Niger Delta itself. The oil companies are well aware of the pollution produced by the flares and the pipes and they try to buy the doctor's silence offering him a job.
Oil on Water shows the reader yet another way of expressing the unsustainability of the situation of the Niger Delta. When she presents the contemporary legacies of colonialism, Ania Loomba presents a possible link between colonialism and the destruction of the
environment: “For decades now, the environmental activist Vandana Shiva has exposed the connection between colonialism and the destruction of environmental diversity” (Loomba, 250). Not only the people living in the Niger Delta are afflicted by the pollution caused by the oil companies in Habila’s fiction. Nature itself is dying there, and the aftermath of the
drilling, the flares, the pipelines and the hazard dumps in the river is presented through a skillful description through Rufus’ eyes during his journey through the Niger Delta. These passages are stylistically similar to descriptions of landscapes and buildings in the Gothic genre:
We saw birds draped over tree branches, their outstretched wings black and slick with oil; dead fishes bobbed white-bellied between tree roots. The next village was almost a replica of the last: the same empty squat dwellings, the same ripe and flagrant stench, the barrenness, the oil slick, and the same indefinable sadness in the air, as if a community of ghosts were suspended above the punctured zinc roofs, unwilling to depart, yet powerless to return. (Habila 9, my emphasis)
The words marked above in italics are reminiscent of Gothic literature. Like landscapes and ruins in 18th century Gothic romances, Habila's Niger Delta is bleak and barren, haunted by (metaphorical) ghosts rather than a source of life. In Gothic Fred Botting writes that “Gothic landscapes are desolate, alienating and full of menace” (Botting, 2). The most enlightening part of Botting's definition of the Gothic in relation to Habila’s novel is the fact that “Gothic signifies a writing of excess” and this is precisely what Habila does when he presents the polluted landscapes of the Niger Delta. Botting describes Gothic though science and
technology: “Scientific theory and technological innovation, often used as figures of human alienation and Gothic excess themselves, provided a vocabulary and objects of fear and anxiety … for Gothic writing.” (Botting, 12). My literary analysis of Oil on Water, revealing a generous use of the Gothic writing in order to describe the pollution caused by the oil companies and the death brought by the fights between the militants and the government allows me to suspect that the Gothic descriptions of the Niger Delta done by Habila, the excesses painted with carefully chosen horrific details are there to serve Habila's purpose.
The excess is there to impress the reader's feelings, to give a purposely exaggerated view of the desolation brought by the oil companies. My careful consideration of the text and its context tells me that Habila's Gothic writing is there to shock and to scare the reader in order to provoke a reaction against the devastation caused by the oil companies.
A few decades before the kidnapping, the Niger Delta is presented as some kind of paradise: “once upon a time they lived in paradise … they lacked for nothing, fishing and hunting and farming and watching their children growing before them, happy” (Habila, 38).
The contrast of the hellish views witnessed by the main character of Oil on Water are all the more striking. Rufus knows this place. Because he grew up in the Niger Delta, he actually has difficulties to process how drastic the changes are after a few decades of oil drilling and oil processing. Before the oil companies discovered oil in the Niger Delta, the villagers living in this region indeed were poor, but they were also self-sufficient and had more than enough to live a happy life according to Rufus. Every time the villages of the Niger Delta are referred to before the invasion of the pipes and the flares, they are described as some kind of paradise where the villagers lack nothing. Everything is almost effortlessly provided by nature. Habila highlights the contrasts of the villages of the Niger Delta “before oil” and “after oil”. Through his sometimes excessive descriptions, he singles out that the only path given by the oil
companies to the Niger Delta is a disastrous one, and that it is insufficient for this process to be slowed. It should be either reversed or changed. In his article, Edebor makes a sharp ecocritical analysis of Habila’s Oil on Water in line with Rufus' presentation of the damage done by the oil companies. He is however not right when he states that: “Habila, in our own estimation, fails to provide us with some proactive measures or solutions to the numerous challenges confronting this poverty-ridden and violence-prone nation.” (Edebor, 48). One could first ask oneself if this really is a novelist's task to suggest solutions to economic instability and enormous impact on the environment. However, after a close reading of
Habila, even though he indeed does not give any concrete solutions to be followed step by step, his text inspired me enough to suggest some possible solutions.
First of all, it is not by accident that Habila’s Oil on Water is presented to the reader through the view of a journalist. Rufus is knowledgeable about Nigerian and global politics and the Niger Delta and what he does not know, he quickly finds out. The most interesting part with this narrator is that he tries hard not to take any side. He is aware of the damage done by the oil companies (and the government supporting them) and he is also aware of the killing and kidnapping done by the militants. Rufus is just aiming at the truth. He has the opportunity to become James’ accomplice and criticize the militants during his private conversation about the kidnapping with James, but he refuses to do so and instead shows James the flaws of his colonial attitude: “And you think the people are corrupt? No they are hungry, and tired”
(Habila, 108) Rufus could also pretend to join the militants’ cause in order to gain their favour or at least make sure that they will spare his life and let him go after they captured him and Isabel Floode. Here he also refuses to compromise and even doubts the leader of the militants – the self proclaimed “professor” – when he claims that Isabel’s driver committed suicide: “- His body was taken away by the river, a tragedy, don't you think? - I find it hard to believe… … - Are you calling me a liar, reporter?” (Habila, 208). Rufus knows that the militants have most likely killed the driver because they think that he is the only one left able to witness that the “professor”, leader of the “freedom fighters'' militants, actually was not the one who initiated Isabel Floode's kidnapping. (Habila, 204) Even when he has doubts about his own mission as a reporter right after his private meeting with James Floode, as Rufus is tempted to take James’ money and disappear without continuing to look for Isabel: “I could take his money and walk out and nothing would happen. Wasn't he in my country, polluting my environment, making millions in the process?” (Habila, 111) Yet he does not run away and continues his quest for the perfect story. Rufus clearly wants the truth to be known and this leads him to some heroic deeds, as for example when he volunteers to be taken as a village hostage instead of a village boy when the militants recapture Isabel (Habila, 188).
In the novel, nature is ascribed healing powers. These powers can be read as counterweight to the destructive forces that are associated with oil capitalism in the novel.
Irikefe is an island in the Delta where the sun and nature worshippers have established a community. Their goal is to live in communion with nature. The island of Irikefe seems not to be polluted by the pipelines and the flares yet. Rufus has to leave Zaq behind in Irikefe
after their first trip to the island as Zaq falls gravely ill. When Rufus wonders if he should let Zaq recover there in order to go back to Port Harcourt, Zaq gets the following answer from the priest: “We have a nurse and she will attend you here. But perhaps you won’t need her.
The air alone will heal you. I have seen it happen.” (Habila, 84) Rufus is actually very sceptical at first, because Zaq is seriously sick. Nevertheless when he comes back to Irikefe to check on Zaq’s condition, the latter seems healthier, probably because the nurse did not let him drink alcohol, but the clean air may have done Zaq some good: “Nurse Gloria said you are making good progress, Mr Zaq.” Rufus says. “She said you had a rough time last night, but now that the fever has broken, you will feel better.” (Habila, 116) A presentation of Boma, Rufus’ sister, illustrates even better the positive effects of nature. An oil explosion sacked Boma’s village and left one side of her face completely disfigured. This could be seen as a metaphor of the damage done by the oil companies in the Niger Delta. Boma was once beautiful and full of energy, but the consequences brought by the oil companies did not leave her untouched and almost destroyed her completely: “Mother was still unused to Boma's scarred face … The last time she'd run into the room and cried and cried and eventually Boma had joined her and the two had cried together till their voice went hoarse and they couldn't cry any more” (Habila, 113) But the real blow to her happiness was not the day she got her scars, it was the day her husband left her: “I had never seen Boma so broken, so defeated as on the day she told me he had gone.” (Habila, 114). Boma is broken, and is well aware that even if she is still young, her face will not attract any new partner. She has given up on any hope and lives with her brother Rufus because she has nowhere else to go now that both her husband and her village are gone. The most obvious effect is how Boma is affected by Irekefe island and its community of worshippers:
Boma was with the group of women at the hearth. I could see her from here, her red blouse standing out in the cluster of white robes around her. She was laughing as she bustled about, organizing the children into a neat line, ladling the porridge from the pot into cups and bowls. She looked really happy, and for a moment, I almost started to believe that the worst really was over.
(Habila, 166)
After the oil explosion, Boma is never presented as happy. Not even once. The fact that she finally seems to be happy is not only because she at last finds an accepting community in a welcoming environment. She is first not a worshipper as she has a red blouse while the
worshippers have white robes, so there is something else allowing her to be happier there.
Boma enjoys a community that respects and worships nature, and this seems to allow her to be happy and stable again. This is why she eventually becomes a worshipper herself at the very end of the novel (Habila, 215) Using Zaq and Boma as examples, Habila indirectly presents the reader the hidden power of nature. To consciously respect and care for the environment might in return make you healthy and happy. At least it will not destroy you like oil and its profits. One of the few positive developments in this novel is what made Boma's life better: her closeness to nature and her care for other people. If it cannot be considered as a solution to the issues of the Niger Delta, it can at least be presented as a source of
inspiration.
I have shown that Oil on Water portrays social injustice happening in the Niger Delta due to the aggressive strategies of the oil companies. It can be read as a critique of the system that makes Nigeria’s economy dependent on the oil companies and oppressing the villagers living in the Niger Delta. In Oil on Water, Habila points an accusing finger at the discourse of the white westerners working for the oil companies now invading Nigeria with petrodollars instead of weapons and behaving as if Nigeria were a new colony to exploit and dispose of.
Habila moreover shows that the real victims of the conflicts between the brutal militants and corrupt federal army are the villagers caught in the middle of their violence and forced to either move away from their villages or sabotage the pipes to resell oil on the black market.
Finally the most disastrous consequence of the oil industry is the pollution and the destruction of the previously paradisiacal nature of the Niger Delta: “They’d been born here, they’d grown up here, they were happy here, and though they may not be rich, the land had been good to them, they never lacked for anything.” (Habila, 39) Habila’s warning seems to be the following: if nothing is done, the whole Niger Delta that was once luxurious with animal life and vegetation will soon irremediably become a wasteland.
Sources Primary
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Loomba, Ania. Colonialism/Postcolonialism. London and New York, Routledge, 2015 Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1996.
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Cowley, Jason “To finish my book was an act of will” The Guardian, Jul. 26, 2001 www.theguardian.com/books/2001/jul/26/fiction.awardsandprizes Accessed Jan. 4, 2021.
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www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/sustainability?q=sustainability Accessed Jan. 7, 2021
