CRITICISM, LITERATURE, THE ENVIRONMENT AND POLICY MAKING IN NIGERIA

Abstract

African literary texts, especially Nigerian literary texts have been mirrors in which we see our environment and what is going on in it. They have helped us to raise awareness about the deplorable state of our environment. With them we can also raise policy issues that will help policy makers and executors to re-engineer our environment for a harmonious relationship between her and us. Essentially, the aim of this study was to show how man has been the architect of his environmental woes, through his actions, directly or indirectly and the need to sensitize ourselves on healthy environmental practices. The study was guided by ecocriticism, which is a theoretical concept that demonstrated that it was possible to understand the environment by studying how it was represented in texts. And the selected texts examined for their reflection of environmental conditions are Amah Akwei’s The Beautiful Ones are not yet Born, Humphery Dibia’s A Drop of Mercy and Wale Okediran’s After the Flood. The method of approach to this paper was qualitative, while quantitative data was provided as evidence of the state of the environment some of the literary texts used in the paper mirrored. The study found that harmful environmental practices like improper waste disposal, building on water paths and lack of proper drainage system, are associated with recklessness and lack of enlightenment on the part of the people and government negligence in providing basic amenities such as pipe borne water, proper waste disposal system and corruption. In conclusion, the study insisted that identifying nature as an extension of us would help us to create a decent environment which is part of the essence of being human; that it was necessary to engrave into our psyche and body politic that cleanliness was next to godliness; that poverty did not necessarily translate to sub-humanity; that existing in a developing country did not mean accepting as normal, living in bits and pieces.