PETRO-VIOLENCE AND THE FEMALE BODY: GENDERED ECOLOGIES OF RESISTANCE IN CONTEMPORARY NIGER DELTA FICTION

Abstract

This study examines how three Niger Delta novels, Kaine Agary's Yellow-Yellow, Helon Habila's Oil on Water, and Chimeka Garricks' Tomorrow Died Yesterday, represent the female body as a site where oil violence is enacted and endured.Using ecofeminism and Rob Nixon's concept of slow violence, the study argues that petro-violence in these texts operates through two linked registers: the literal contamination of women's farmland, water, and reproductive lives, and a figurative language that casts the land itself as a violated female body.The analysis identifies patterns of environmental dispossession, transactional intimacy, disfigurement, and captivity, alongside quieter modes of female resistance: flight, refusal, and guardianship.The study concludes that Niger Delta fiction by both women and men repeatedly genders ecological catastrophe, though with different political consequences depending on authorial standpoint.The study recommends gender-sensitive environmental policies and greater attention to literary insights in addressing ecological injustice and sustainable development in the Niger Delta.