Witnessing an Act: The Role of Journalism within Helon Habila's Oil on Water
Written by Taylor Elton
I've seen children snatched away from their mothers, never to be reunited.
I've seen husbands taken from their wives and kids and sent away to prison.
I've seen grown men flogged by soldiers in front of their kids.
That's how history is made, and it's our job to witness it.
-Habila, Oil on Water (66)
Helon Habila is a Nigerian novelist who published his third major novel, Oil on Water, in 2011. The novel follows a talented journalist, Rufus, who is paired with the older and more experienced reporter Zaq to make contact with the kidnapped wife of a wealthy oil executive. The pair travel to meet up with and interview the kidnappers as proof that she is alive, but violence and destruction derail their plans. According to Bryon Caminero-Santangelo and his chapter titled "Witnessing the Nature of Violence," Habila addresses many issues that are occurring within the Niger Delta, but his novel truly encompasses what it means to act as a journalist that is surrounded by what could soon be known as the greatest environmental disaster of all time (Caminero-Santagelo 229). Rufus is taking on this grand adventure in hopes that he is going to come across the perfect story that will bring him glory and fame. Instead, his journey takes him on a whirlwind of emotions and a realization that the perfect story may not be what he's searching for in the first place.
The Niger Delta is currently a war zone. Massive oil companies come into communities of people and drilling into the land for the oil underneath. The drilling not only destroys the land and the environment around it, but also puts the communities at an extreme disadvantage within their own homes of the Niger Delta. Villagers have taken to creating illegal oil refineries off of main oil lines, which does further the destruction and heighten the danger, but is really the only way for some of these people to survive. Drawing from a documentary titled Nigeria: Oil pollution in the Niger Delta, These people sell as much of the oil as they can to make a profit but are also paying the military and police to look the other way when they come knocking on their doors (Nigeria).
In Oil on Water, Rufus experiences first hand what oil companies are doing to the environment and it's people. He experiences villages that were demolished with one having a "chicken pen with about ten chickens inside, all dead and decomposing, the maggots trafficking beneath the feathers," petrol being poured on villagers and peaceful men being attacked by the police (9). His mind and notebook are filled with horror after horror that he then pours into his articles to be published in the newspapers. His job is to witness the acts that are occurring within the Niger Delta and, even worse, to let them happen. At multiple points throughout the novel, he wishes to go forward and intervene but knows that he cannot for that could mean losing his own life in the process. And if he did not return, if he did not go to write his articles, then who would tell the rest of the world what was happening? The first few pages of the novel exemplify this idea as Rufus is refering to an explosion that injured his sister and permanently disfigured her face. After the heartbreaking event he wrote an article which was the major breakthrough that not only pushed him into his career but also allowed the event to be broadcast to many other people other than the ones that observed it personally (Habila 1-2).
Reporters may arguably have the hardest and most dangerous job in the world. It must be hard enough to discover a story that will grab the reader's attention and hold it for a suspended period of time, but when someone is reporting on life or death situations and doing so could get them killed by the police or militants, it is another ball game. The role of journalism and the journalists within Oil on Water is not simply to tell the story of a kidnapped woman. It is to witness the atrocities occurring within their own world and to broadcast it out to the worlds that may not yet be listening. The acts they witness are horrible and heartbreaking but with the outlet of the media for them to utilize, the real story will reach the ears who so desperately need to hear it.
Yet, while journalists play a huge role in the fight against the oil crisis, they are not the only ones. Writers also are able to weave tales that show the violence and destruction that is happening. While journalism is important, Habila chose to write a fictional novel rather than a long article. Journalists have a smaller window of time and a smaller roll of paper. Writers, on the other hand, can write and write pages full of information and events that can be sold around the world. They are even different than people like us, those who are creating informational websites like this, as we can include pictures and videos that reach even further for an audience. We are all different people with different specialties, but we are all fighting toward the same goal. Journalists, writers, and scholars are the forefront offense against the destruction caused by the oil in the Niger River Delta. Our job is to bear witness, to find the stories that go the heart of the matter, to reveal the slow violence that too often slips from our attention, to speak truth to power, and to cry out for justice and peace.
Works Cited
- Caminero-Santagelo, Byron. “Witnessing the Nature of Violence: Resource Extraction and Political Ecologies in the Contemporary African Novel.” Global Ecologies and the Environmental Humanities: Postcolonial Approaches. Ed. Elizabeth DeLoughrey, Jill Didur, and Anthony Carrigan. Routledge, 2015: 226-241. Print.
- Habila, Helon. Oil on Water. New York: Penguin, 2010. Print.
- Nigeria: Oil Pollution in the Niger Delta. Global 3000. 12 Nov. 2012. Youtube. Web. 1 Apr. 2016.
