Helon Habila’s novel Oil on Water invites readers on the journey of two news reporters visiting the Niger Delta. Allowing us to see the devastating environmental impacts of rich-oil companies and the suffering of the innocent villagers.
When considering why this work of fiction was weaved into the class curriculum, at the onset of the novel I presumed that we would focus on the reporters’ voluntary adventure into the Niger Delta as a form of activism. By observing the situation there and reporting the story to a broader audience across the Globe, I thought we would evaluate the relationship between journalism and activism.
Though this is one way to look at the novel, in our class discussion we evaluated who was innocent and who was guilty. After ruling out the government as guilty for accepting money from the British oil companies, the soldiers for killing innocent people, and the rich white people for investing in the big oil companies, the only people considered to be innocent were the reporters, the worshippers, the villagers, and the militants. The worshippers and villagers were innocent people forced to choose between becoming a soldier or wanderers after selling their land to the oil companies. While the militants seem guilty at face value, their act of kidnapping, tapping oil pipes, and using violence was an attempt to stand up for their environment and the Nigerian people. They like the villagers did not have a choice. They were neglected by their government and taking any action possible to save themselves.
Recognizing who is innocent and guilty helps us appreciate this novel’s contribution to our understanding of activism. The story enlightens us to the villagers’ cause. When we, liberal westerners, think about big oil companies, our major concern is barring these industries to protect our environment and ourselves against climate change. We assume scientific reasoning and tell ourselves that increased burning of fossil fuels like coal and oil increase the concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere. We are quick to worry about the affects of CO2 on global temperatures, oceans, the arctic, and the list goes on.
However, this novel opens us up to the other side of the argument – where is this oil coming from. It sheds light on the exploitation of vulnerable populations by wealthy foreign oil companies, as seen similarly in Spider the Artist. The fact that the novel does not mention climate change forces us to consider that this is also a human rights abuse. We begin to consider how these peoples’ daily lives have been entirely altered. They are fighting for resources that were once abound and now contaminated by oil pollution. The farmers have lost their land. The fishermen have lost their catch. And they have all lost their water, shelter, and clean air. Overall, this novel adds to our study by helping us realize that environmental activism is not just a story about the environmental sciences but something much larger. A story about external greedy powers destroying villages, disrupting culture, and shifting power/social dynamics.
