Environmental History of the Niger Delta and its People
Introduction by Jonathan Steinwand
Rich in ecological and cultural diversity, the people of the Niger River Delta had hoped that postcolonial independence would help them shed the legacy of slavery, resource extraction, and economic dependence. Despite lucrative oil contracts and a proliferation of postcolonial Nigerian literature, however, civil war, corporate negligence, and neocolonial corruption have degraded the Niger Delta waters and landscape and left the Delta's micro-minorities with little recourse but to protest. When Ken Saro-Wiwa and his Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) gained international attention for the movement and the writers of the Delta in the 1990s, hope again seemed possible. Unfortunately, as Naomi Klein reports, the brutal military response to "Operation Climate Change," the nonviolent protests of the Ijaw Youth Council in 1998, explains "why many young people in the Niger Delta today have lost their faith in nonviolence" and turned to other tactics (308).
Twenty years after the execution of the Ogoni 9, the slow violence of extraction, corruption, and neglect have continued. How do we now respond to the injustices that have turned the Delta into an environmental sacrifice zone? First, we need some context to understand what has happened in this part of Nigeria.
Work Cited
Klein, Naomi. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014. Print.
