Environmental Degradation and Attendant Consequences in Tanure Ojaide's The Activist

Abstract

This paper entitled “Environmental degradation is one of the
foremost cankerworms plaguing the Niger-Delta region of our
country”, Nigeria. The discovery of oil there has become a curse
instead of a blessing to the people there. The activities of the oil
companies there and with the trait support of the Federal
Government has become a source of sorrow and nightmare to the
inhabitants whose local environment has been destroyed. So in this
study, "Environmental Degradation in Tanure Ojaide's The Activist "
the researcher sets out to portray how the writer criticised the events in
his society, and how the story serves as a reflection of the problems of
the masses and the downtrodden in our society. The novelist made use of
the literary medium to satirise the leaders in Africa and their styles of
exercising reins of power which, instead of ameliorating the problems
of the people and bringing in even development, only succeed in
creating more suffering, pain and disappointment. Tanure Ojaide shows the humiliation, oppression, insensitivity, waste of lives, exploitation,
cruelty of the ruling class, especially the military, on the citizens, as a
result of greed and capitalist tendencies, which impoverish the citizens
further. The researcher used both primary and secondary sources in the
analysis of data. The findings showed that the citizens of the NigerDelta experience betrayal, oppression, deprivation, and environmental
degradation as a result of oil exploration. Unfortunately, their leaders do
not care much about their problems as they are only interested in selfish
acquisition of wealth to the detriment of the people.