IIARD International Institute of Academic Research and Development

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND COMMUNICATION STUDIES (IJELCS )

E-ISSN 2545-5702
P-ISSN 2695-2157
VOL. 10 NO. 1 2025
DOI: 10.56201/ijelcs.vol.10.no1.2025.pg57.73

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Resource Exploitation as a Metaphor for Environmental Ruination in Kaine Agary’sYellow-Yellow and May Ifeoma Nwoye’s Oil Cemetery.

Okachukwu Onuah Wosu PhD

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Abstract

The anthropocentric consciousness of human beings has induced the belief that humans are the most significant and only important entity in the ecosphere. This accounts for his preponderance towards reducing every other entity, such as the natural resources, animals, environment, and aquatic life, to a second inconsequential ‘other’ and therefore an object for exploitation. Resource exploitation, here, refers to the prospecting and exploration of natural resources for the use of human beings. With particular reference to crude oil and its associated by-products, this study reveals that resource exploitation translates into environmental despoliation and degradation. The study adopts ecocriticism as a theoretical lens through which Kaine Agary’sYellow-Yellow and May Ifeoma Nwoye’s Oil Cemetery are read as texts that explore environmental ruination in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. It concludes that there is an ongoing wanton degradation of the Niger Delta environment without a simultaneous provision of an alternative means of survival for the inhabitants. Since prevention is better than cure, this paper recommends that the multinational oil companies should be compelled by the federal government of Nigeria to comply with existing environmental legislation and international operational standards so as to reduce, if not stop, the level of environmental degradation.

keywords:

Ecocriticism, Resources exploitation, environmental degradation, Niger Delta,

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