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Page 110 
 

THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH: INVESTIGATING THE 

LETHAL CONSEQUENCES OF ENVIRONMENTAL ABUSE 

AND EXPLOITATION IN IFEOMA OKOYE’S THE FOURTH 

WORLD 

 

Chike Okoye, PhD 

Department of English Language & Literature 

Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka 

Email: okpilimbem@gmail.com 

& 

Chisom Loretta Asika 

Department of English Language & Literature 

Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka 

Email: chisomasika18@gmail.com 

 

 

Abstract  

Environment refers to the totality surrounding a substance or a 

person's existence and the way they relate to the world. It is no 

longer news that our environment is under pillage and constant 

abuse, a situation that has not only become worrisome but 

threatening too. This has also made ecological issue one of the most 

discussed issues in recent times as man sits on a ticking bomb due to 

constant exploitation and abuse of the environment. As expected, 

writers, both African writers and writers elsewhere have all taken 

turn to explore, capture and treat the problems of exploitation as it 

affects society. This paper investigates the lethal consequences of 

environmental abuse and exploitation not just on the environment 

but on individuals as fictitiously but conscientiously explored in 

Ifeoma Okoye’s The Fourth World. The crux of the argument in this 

study is that the problems of environment transcend from physical 



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pollution to other social problems that pollute the lives of 

individuals, thwart their desired lives and dreams and at the long run 

contribute to an unhealthy society. With eco-criticism as theoretical 

anchor, the study concludes on how these occurrences proved pivotal 

in altering the lives of the citizens, with society at the receiving end 

of it all.  

Keywords: Environment, Exploitation, Degradation, Pollution, 

Abuse, Poverty 

Introduction 

It is no longer news that the earth and its treasure base is 

experiencing a siege from all aspects of human endeavours ranging 

from misuses, and degradation of environment, which have become 

so easily spotted and there are disruptions every day, and almost 

everywhere. Other instances abound making environmental concern 

one of the most discussed global issues around the world today.  

Environmental degradation has been recognized by many critics, 

scholars, individuals, international organizations as one of the major 

threats facing the planet, as man’s activities continue to compromise 

and bastardize his environment in such as alarming rate that it has 

not only become disheartening and dehumanizing but unhealthy and 

threatening too. Exploitation on the other hand, is the action or fact 

of treating someone unfairly in order to benefit from their works. It 

can also mean the use of natural resources for economic growth, 

sometimes with a negative connotation accompanied by 

environmental degradation.  Writers, both of the African writer and 

others from elsewhere have all taken turn to explore, capture and 

treat the problems of exploitation as it affects society. As opines by 

William Slaymaker: 



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Black African critics and writers have traditionally 

embraced nature writing, land issues and landscape 

themes that are pertinent to national and local cultural 

claims and that also functions as pastoral 

reminiscences or even projections of a golden age 

when many of the environmental evils resulting from 

colonialism and the exploitation of indigenous 

resources have been remediated. A review of any 

number of bibliographies, literary histories, and 

anthologies of black African literature and criticism in 

the past several decades will bear out this intense 

interest in the local recapture of a violated nature. 

(Echoing Others, 683) 

 

To paraphrase Ikechukwu Asika, man’s exploitation of his 

environment for economic and political gain is to these writers one 

of man’s effort to undermine the value and quality of better life and 

to destroy it by its greed and excess ambition. Just like man is free, 

nature ought to be free in other for both to achieve the 

complimentarity and symbiotic relationship expected for each 

survival and comfortable existence (Poetry and Social Activism, 43) 

Thus, environmental literature has been in the increase overtime as 

writers and scholars have continued to see the need to use the 

medium of writing and literature to project the cause of man and his 

environment. It is the glaring fact that stems the interest of this study 

to investigate the other shades, and human side of the environmental 

abuse and exploitation as situated in Ifeoma Okoye’s The Fourth 

World. 

 

Ecocriticism as Theoretical Anchor 

 



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By analogy, as Anne Dobie reveals, ecocriticism is concerned with 

the relationship between literature and environment or how man’s 

relationship with his physical environment is reflected in literature. It 

is credited to William Rueckert who used it in his 1978 essay, 

Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism in which he 

showed the pertinent relationship between ecological ideas and the 

study of literature. (238)  

Ann Dobie draws out the conceptual underpinnings around 

ecocriticism as a theoretical anchor as outlined by Glotfelty.  The 

three analogous patterns of Glotfelty reveal the underlying basis 

which ecocritics have found useful in their engagement, which is 

also part of what informed the choice of the theory as the theoretical 

anchor for this study. One of these, according to her, is an 

examination of how nature is represented in literature, thereby 

raising public awareness of attitudes toward the natural world. 

Among the questions to be considered in this first pattern that 

formed the core of ecocritical discourse are: How is nature affected 

by human beings in the text, and how are human beings affected by 

nature? Guided by this theory, this study hopes to provide answers to 

such questions in Ifeoma Okoye’s The Fourth World as core aspects 

of ecocriticism as theoretical anchor.  

 

Environmental Abuse and Its Aftermaths in Ifeoma Okoye’s The 

Fourth World 

Ifeoma Okoye is one of the environmental friendly writers in 

Nigeria whose literary work has continued to beam the light and 

form the matrix of environmental discourse from a literary 

viewpoint. Her novel, The Fourth World is a masterpiece. The novel 

narrates the tales of greed, injustice, incompetence, corruption, 



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insecurity, exploitation, discrimination, bad government and lots of 

myriads of issues affecting the nation. A journey through the well-

paved path of The Fourth World is as interesting as it is thought 

provoking. As Ernest Emenyonu supports:  

The Fourth world is peopled by the true ‘wretched of 

the earth,’ who squat in shanties, slums, and unsightly 

make shift abodes under the bridges day and night in 

both developed and developing worlds. They are the 

homeless who have no place to lay their heads in both 

the most affluent and not –so-affluent nations of the 

modern world. If full view of the billionaires in the 

advanced world, they feed off discarded left-overs in 

garbage containers. The inhabitants of the Fourth 

world wear a badge of common identity- poverty- 

which is their common denominator. They cross all 

racial boundaries and are not restricted by gender, 

tongue or clime… (vi) 

The Kasanga Avenue, is a main street of Kasanga settlement 

otherwise known as the Fourth world or urban jungle and captures a 

vivid picture of hardship and continuous suffering, an environment 

of flooding, darkness, where there is no direct access to public 

transport and there is also no electricity because the residents were 

poor and could not bribe the electricity officials (Odinye, 2018). The 

narrator explains that the residents had to walk for forty minutes on 

average to get to the Four o’ clock market, from where they could 

take a transport to any other part of the town. The market was the 

residents’ only link to the rest of the Enugu and civilization (Okoye 

103).  

One of the characters worthy of focus in our study of the impact of 

the environment on characters in the novel is Chira. Chira is the 



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protagonist in Ifeoma Okoye’s The Fourth World. Through Chira 

and the lenses of other characters, the full impact and effect of 

environmental abuse, not just on the environment but on the 

characters comes to full glare. In the novel, through the depiction of 

the writer, we learn that Chira is an intelligent, hardworking and 

softhearted young woman whose ambition is to rise above her 

deprived background by acquiring a good education. This was her 

dream and she struggles to acquire it until the death of her father 

truncates her education even before she finishes secondary school 

and places on her young shoulders the heavy burden of having to 

look after her ailing mother who will no longer do anything for 

herself.   

The loss of Chira’s father is fingered as the chief cause of the 

several problems the character faced and encountered in the course 

of the novel. Like earlier stated, it cost her education and exposed 

her to the challenges of taking care of her sick mother and siblings 

at a very tender age. This is not devoid of external factors and 

consequences as many men willingly wished to exploit the situation 

to their often selfish interest. The death of Chira’s father proves 

pivotal in navigating the ship of Chira’s destiny to an opposite 

direction. One would wonder what the environment got to do with 

the death of Chira’s father which invariably affected her. The 

answer is not farfetched. The environmental abuse and degradation 

is seen in the novel as a contributing factor that catalyzed the death 

of Chira’s father. The main hospital, the government owned hospital 

where Akalaka, Chira’s father was admitted clearly depicts 

environmental degradation. The environment of the main hospital is 

strictly dirty. The drainages are blocked and thus breed mosquitoes 

which declare war on patients and people who take care of them. 

The writer captures this thus: 



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The mosquitoes hiding in the blocked drains in the 

hospital premises resurfaced in their hundreds in 

search of human blood. They declared war on Chira. 

She hated them, their bites made her skin itch and if 

she dared scratch the spots, she ended up with tiny 

blisters that left black scars when they healed. She 

had been Nicknamed ‘patch leg’ at primary school 

because of the hundred of mosquitoes’ bites scars on 

her leg. (Fourth World, 34) 

 

It is sad to realize on paper that the government of Kasanga claims to 

spend billions of naira in providing healthcare facilities and drugs, 

yet the masses have no access to them. The hospital is poorly 

managed to a point that you go outside the hospital to get some 

things needed for your treatment. This situation is not only an 

aberration but a crime against the collective wellbeing of individuals 

in society. Despite the taxes, revenues and allocations received by 

the government, the people have nothing to show for it except a 

forsaken environment where a death trap is erected in the name of a 

government hospital. Hence, the nonchalant attitude of the health 

care givers and government, the negligence and abuse of the hospital 

environment led to the death of many patients, including Akalaka, 

Chira’s father who later becomes a victim of the vicious circle of 

decay and hypocrisy. The situation in the hospital is so bad that 

even the mortuary is not functional, so Chira is asked to transfer 

her father's corpse to another mortuary as the one in the hospital 

is not "working properly'. If she does not comply, the corpse 

"...will turn to rotten meat in twenty four hours..." if left in 

their own mortuary (Fourth World, 63). 

In the novel, Fourth World, the author exposes us to a very troubling 

situation as we are meant to see how the problems of environment, 



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in several ways contribute to the plight of the teeming population as 

is the clear case of the inhabitants of Kasanga in the novel. The 

citizens only depend on their hard work to survive the various 

shades of hardship posed by fate, government, nature and the 

environment. Chira lives with her parents in a ''tiny room with its 

minimal ventilation and perpetually leaking roof... no 

conveniences" (Fourth World, 29) in Kasanga Avenue located in 

the most neglected and filthiest part of town, the flood rampage has 

created deep gutters that have merged with the road in a way that it 

is difficult to differentiate the road from the gutters. Consequently, 

residents wade through dangerous expanse of surging muddy 

water which causes many deaths as they are continuously being 

carried away by flood. During the rainy seasons, residents stay 

in their precarious houses to avoid being drowned like those who 

died in one of the floods named the 'Great Floods'. It was a 

tragedy that would have been averted if, according to a 

journalist, the "government was alive to its responsibilities" 

(Fourth World, 147).  

Indeed, the novel presents vividly the various forms of environment 

abuses and exploitation and how it affects characters, mostly the 

female folks. In the novel, we see how Chira and her mother, Kodili 

resort to doing menial jobs to survive. They plait women’s hair 

under a tree near the market since they could not afford to rent a 

shop at the four o’clock market. In depicting the above experiences, 

Okoye raises a growing concern for the poor who find comfort and 

shield under a tree to eke out a living; but yet the same environment 

that tries at some point to give shelter to the down trodden and lower 

classes in society is destroyed by the government in a deliberate 

deforestation with no plan to replant new trees and arrest the 

ecological menace taking over the world (Odinye, 2018). The 

concerns of the government and the owners of the means of 



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production is to erect new building and business centers that will 

ensure steady economic boom with no concern about the women 

whose source of livelihood is temporary cut short and the 

environment they destroy. The trees are cut down and by so doing, 

these women’s temporary place of trade is destroyed and the 

business badly affected. They have to find new shades and new 

places to set up which takes time and limit business. All these are 

problems the women have to endure. In Mama Egodi’s words to 

Chira, she says: 

They razed everything to the ground. That tree under 

which you set to plait women’s hair, the mechanic 

shops, nearby the stalls, the kiosks, all were razed to 

the ground kpatakpata… a rich man that bought the 

place is going to build a big hotel or something there. 

(Fourth World, 144) 

 

The above act depicts landscape pollution which is viewed in this 

novel as one of the damaging problems of the society. The rich 

disregard, exploit and manipulate the poor who are defenseless  

because they are wealthy. Even when the environment begins to 

fight back, these rich men are well protected from it all in their air-

conditioned mansions and solid buildings. This action only 

worsens the already unstable life of the residents, as the 

affected people are sent back to homelessness and a market of 

unemployment. More so, the federal government tends to neglect 

such areas like Kasanga Avenue abandoning them to perish in such 

slums and abandoned areas. If those areas were strictly planned and 

developed by the government, there won’t be a problem when it 

rains. Whenever it rains in these areas, it was very unwise to come 

out and even after the rain; Kasanga Avenue becomes a dirt dump 

for anyone who cares to see. These are dirt and refuge gathered from 

various parts of the town and emptied in the Kasanga Avenue since 



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it is the way the Avenue was planned and the flood cannot help it but 

to frustrate the inhabitants further. This is as the writer depicts: 

Only a few of the residents were able to find standing 

or sitting space on the narrow strip of land between 

the shanty and the wide gutter in from of it. The rest 

stood on the street across the gutter. It had rained 

earlier in the day and as usual the gutters, 

overwhelmed by the flood water, had distributed their 

filth contents all over the area, leaving the much 

behind as the water returned to its normal level 

(Fourth World, 59). 

 

The above extract is to show the height of environmental decay that 

was seen in Kasanga Avenue. Looking at the effect of such 

environment to kids and the people living in Kasanga Avenue, it 

could cause a deadly ailment or untimely death because of the kind 

of environment that they were exposed to. Chira many times 

wonders if the Avenue is a cursed place for those who committed 

some serious crime against their nature, if not she wonders what fate 

confines her to the dungeon of a place that seem to be the very 

replica of hell on earth. Chira once laments thus: 

…As a small girl, she had played with her friends 

around the deep gutters, often retrieving form them 

discarded items like empty plastic bottles and cans 

and selling these treasures to dealers. These days the 

mere sight of the slimy, greenish scum that floated on 

the surface of the gutters made her cringe as if 

someone had emptied a can of mucky and wriggly 

worms all over her… she had come to see Kasanga 

Avenue as a cursed place, as a place where people 

had been deprived of good education, good health, 

good jobs and basic amenities; where they were 



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deprived of dignity and honour. A place where 

people’s toil would never bring any improvement to 

their lives. (Fourth World, 84) 

 

The above excerpt shows the level of poverty and decay in The 

Fourth World. The dirty environment of Kasanga Avenue takes toll 

in their lives. The environmental decay did not just end with their 

environment but also their lives because the living condition of the 

people is nothing to write home about. People suffer from hunger 

and need. Begging was a normal thing in the ‘the fourth world’ of 

Kassaga Avenue. Mana Egodi’s children, Egodi, and Donatus, who 

lived in the Kasanga Avenue and was greatly loved be Chira, are 

killed by a racing lorry as they tried to cross Obiagu Street. They 

were coming back from hawking bananas. Their death shocked the 

entire Kasanga community. Though some blamed Mama Egodi for 

such evil that befell her, the truth still remains that poverty made that 

possible. If they do not hawk, they will not eat or even go to school 

and it is the business that claimed the lives of these children. This is 

the kind of miserable life that was obtainable in that avenue and 

mama Egodi is in no way meant to be blamed for the fate of her 

children. The government should rather be blamed for not providing 

a good living condition for the poor. The negligence of these 

children is capable of triggering some negative actions from these 

children which is unhealthy to any growing and developing society. 

Another good example of the effect of environment degradation is 

death resulting from the excess flooding and rain. The inhabitants of 

Kasanga has not only their poverty and desolate environment long 

abandoned by the government to contend with, they have nature to 

combat with in the form of rainfall that flood the entire avenue, 

carrying away roofs and windows and at some occasions, human 

beings which is common in Kasanga Avenue whenever it rains. This 

is possible because the government has failed to provide the needed 



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drainage system and canals that could channel and have taken care of 

the menacing effect of the rain. It is sad and heart wrenching for one 

to try to picture the fate of these citizens trapped in a ghetto with no 

visible escape route. The writer depicts Chira in one of the occasions 

it rained heavily thus: 

She watched the flood cascade down Kasanga 

Avenue like a mountain river. The deep gutters and 

the road had fused into a dangerous expanse of 

surging muddy water, not a soul was in sight. All had 

taken refuge in their precarious shacks. The year 

before, a small girl and an elderly woman, both 

residents of the avenue, had perished in the Great 

Floods of Kasanga Avenue, as the press had named 

the annual deluge. (Fourth World, 146) 

 

It is excruciating to realize that people from ‘the fourth world’ of 

Kasanga Avenue perish yearly from the unplanned building and over 

flooding which actually can be avoided if necessary measures are 

taken by the government. The journalist indicts the government 

and attributes the deplorable living condition in Kasanga Avenue 

to bad and insensitive leadership.  

In the end, Chira is dispossessed of the family land that could have 

funded her education, and her request for a loan from her best 

friend’s father is turned down, with her ambition temporarily tucked 

away. Chira later finds a job. Her salary is meager but she must 

somehow manage it to support the household and pay for her 

mother’s medical treatment and inconsiderate demands. As Chira 

and her mother are about to be thrown out of their shanty for non-

payment of rent, a possible savior arrives in the shape of Maks, a 

wealthy but shadowy businessman. He covers the family debts and 

proposes marriage to Chira. Chira is torn between marrying this 



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strange, possessive man and holding on to her dream- to continue 

her education and make something of herself, a pursuit she is sure 

this marriage will deny her. Chira’s eternal desire to be educated 

and self-reliant, her humiliating encounters with the wealthy people 

that cross her path, the disturbing traits she discovers in Maks, and 

his inexplicable behavior the first time she visits him-all combine to 

make her seriously question the wisdom of marrying him. She 

finally makes a decision which is not to marry him but at the same 

time lost her mother to the cold hands of death because Chira could 

not afford her medical bills and of course Maks was no longer 

willing to help because of Chira’s decision not to marry him. We see 

how the ebbs and tides of time continue to toss Chira towards an 

‘undesired’ and ‘undeserving’ end all consequences of 

environmental abuse that does not only shatter characters dreams 

and ambitions but thwart their collective destinies towards an anti 

climax. This is a situation that could upturn the much desired 

harmony and decorum desired for a prosperous and harmonious 

society. this is in tandem with Onyeka Iwuchukwu’s conclusion 

thus: 

Generally, developing societies of the world like 

Asia, Africa, and sometimes, South America are 

referred to as third world countries.  Ifeoma Okoye 

insists in The Fourth world… This fourth world is not 

located in a specific region or continent, so it has no 

specific name. It is “…a world whose citizenship is 

not defined by race, color, geographical location, 

tongue or creed…the universal world of the poor 

found everywhere on earth… a world of voiceless 

humanity, the ignored and despised found in rich as in 

poor countries….poverty is their unmistakable 

identity. (Fourth World, 266) 



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Ifeoma Okoye elaborates fully the impact of environment on 

characters in various guises which forms the crux of our discourse in 

this paper. The writer does well to explain the symbolic meaning of 

‘the fourth world’, the psychological trauma and mindset of those 

living in Kasanga Avenue thus: 

Kasanga Avenue was a destroyer of people’s bodies 

and mind. Living there meant not being able to see a 

doctor because there is no money. It means not 

having a good job or not having a job at all because of 

lack of education skill. It meant losing children to 

illness because of death of clean water, a filth 

environment and insufficient proper food. Kasanga 

Avenue was a maximum security prison for people 

who had committed the crime of allowing themselves 

to be born into poverty. (Fourth World, 95) 

 

The above excerpt shows not just the environmental pollution of the 

Kasanga Avenue but also the living condition of the people living 

there. Kasanga Avenue presents only misfortunes like Akalaka's 

sickness and death; the death of Egodi and Donatus who are run 

down by a truck while hawking banana for their mother; the death 

of two youths killed by police during a protest march for the 

death of a girl and a woman in a dreadful flood that ravaged the 

Avenue and others. The residents also contend with police 

brutality just like the Black people did during the now defunct 

apartheid South Africa. Kasanga Avenue represents the slums 

and the ghettos of this world where countless residents like 

Akalaka and his wife die because they cannot afford medication.  

Ifeoma Okoye presents vivid experiences of people in this world as 

they suffer gross social injustice in form of segregation, oppression, 

and exploitation as a result of the political system that empowers the 



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affluent few and dis-empowers the majority poor (Odinye, 2018). 

The inhabitants of this fourth world struggle for survival in penury 

and misery amidst overwhelming obstacles to their continued 

existence. In Kasanga Avenue, sickness, and preventable deaths are 

daily occurrences so people hardly experience joy or laughter, only 

misfortunes, sadness and sorrows. Kasanga Avenue destroys people 

so much that they are deprived of "dignity and honour" (Fourth 

World, 104). 

 

Conclusion 

The Fourth World is a novel that lays bare the difficulties of the 

masses living in abject poverty. The author made use of a fictitious 

shanty slum of Kasanga Avenue in Enugu to expose the negligence 

of environment by the government. Kasanga Avenue in the novel is 

a representative of this ‘fourth world’ found in Nigeria. The 

characters in several of their actions and experiences manifest the 

hazard of poor environment. The novel reveals to us how 

environmental concerns could change our lives from what we 

planned to what we may never have bargained for. The crux of the 

discourse is that poor environment does not only involve health 

issues, it also causes loss of loved ones, loss of dreams and 

aspirations, decline in morality among other myriad of losses. 

Environmental issues are rich sources of discomfort which not only 

thwart people’s lives but affect their destinies and inhibit harmonious 

social cohesion.  

To this end, one realizes that the members of this 'fourth world' 

belong to it not because they are lazy or unintelligent, but 

because of the type of politics that is practiced which produces 

bad leaders who places them in that condition. However, the 

writer condemns their complacency and insists that injustice should 

be challenged so the neglected residents should not see their 



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pitiable situation as their destinies but rather a call to revolt for 

the better. The characters should not grow content but instead 

they should, like Chira, rebel against oppression and injustice 

and strive to improve their lives which to Okoye, is the only 

viable way forward. It is to the writer, an inevitable and long 

overdue struggle, a struggle from the confinements of 

wretchedness and desolation to a meaningful, progressive and 

palatable life all geared towards a healthy and progressive 

society that is bold enough to break away from the limitations 

and encumbrances of environmental degradation and 

exploitation.  

 

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