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African Cultural Spatiality and the Ecocritical Praxis: An 
Insight into Tanure Ojaide's Delta Blues and Home Songs

   Jude Zeal ADEGOKE

  Department of English and Literary Studies,

   Kogi State University, 

Anyigba.

07031068023

judezealous@yahoo.com

&

Grace OBADA

Department of General Studies,

Kogi State Polytechnic. Lokoja

&

Otaru Friday JOHN

Department of General Studies, 

Kogi State Polytechnic, Lokoja

Abstract

When one reads through the critical opinions of many Anglo-American 

ecocritics on the ecocritical praxis, one who knows nothing about Africa 

and the vigorous struggle against environmental and ecological 

degradation would conclude that ecocriticism is the exclusive literary 

practice of the West. This is a problem, because, though subject to and 

often affected by cultural demands, practices as well as world view, 

ecocriticism is a global practice, predicated on the modern 

environmental crises that have continued to raise serious concerns 

among men of differing cultures. Using the analytical method, and the 

ecocritical theory as framework, this paper establishes the ecocritical 

praxis as 'a familiar bedfellow' in African literature, exploring the extent 

of the presence of the ecocritical tradition in African literary canon, 

using Tanure Ojaide's Delta Blues and Home Songs as a paradigmatic 

example. It is discovered that African writers, especially as evident in 

the aforementioned text, use their works to agitate against 

environmental degradation and despoliation, with the sole aim of 

recuing it from further damage. It is concluded that though, ecocriticism 

started in the western world, it has spread across the globe, including 

Africa, where it has come to gain so much acceptability, following the 

growing unease over environmental degradation on the continent.

Keywords: African, cultural spatiality, praxis, ecocriticism, Anglo-

American

Introduction

The way ecocritical practice is perceived by Western critics, 

categorically establishes it as an exclusively Western literary 

engagement. It thereby cuts off the entire African continent and the 

advocates of this literary practice from the global struggle against the 

ecological question. But the universal truth about ecocriticism is that, it 

is a practice that sweeps through continents of the modern world. This is 

following the growing environmental damage that tends to propel man 

and his environment speedily to a catastrophic end, and which demands 

urgent attention. While it is true that there is a subtle variance in the 

degree to which critics engage in ecocriticism across cultures, no culture 

in modern times can be cut off from the vigorous struggle against global 

ecological crises. This is because there is hardly any society that has not 

seen industrialization nay modernity with their large-scale negative 

effects on the natural environment and ecology. This paper, therefore, 

examines the ecocritical praxis within the African cultural space, 

establishing the fact that, like western observers, Africans are worried 

about their environment and how it can be rescued from further 

despoliation, thus defining them as ecocritics, and ecocriticism as a 

global practice.

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COOU JOFOCUS: COOU Journal of Folklore and Cultural Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2021 Jude Zeal ADEGOKE, Grace OBADA & Otaru Friday JOHN: African Cultural Spatiality and

 the Ecocritical Praxis: An Insight into Tanure Ojaide’s Delta Blues and Home Songs

mailto:judezealous@yahoo.com


Ecocriticism in African Literature: A Critique

According to Aswin Prasanth, 

African writers are in a “state of nature,” in perfect harmony with 

environment. Their literature has therefore a rural orientation on the 

one hand and despise of urban background on the other. There is an 

inherent longing for lost rustic serenity in African literatures. In 

African literatures, the celebration of nature and wildness is more 

dynamic than in any other literatures. This celebration is part of 

community life. African communities have close relationship with 

nature and conservation ecology is part of everyday practice. 

Writers like Amos Tutuola, Camara Laye, Mongo Bette, Ferdinand 

Oyono, Cyprian Ekwensi, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Chinua Achebe, 

Wole Soyinka, Nadine Gordimer, Alan Panton, Ben Okri, 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, Ama Ata Aidoo and J.M. Coetzee have 

attempted to demonstrate these facts through their works (59).

The above assertion is obviously true considering the affinity the 

traditional African man had with his natural environment, before the 

advent of colonialism. This relationship is captured by Achebe in his 

novel Things Fall Apart, where we see the natives struggling against the 

white settlers in an attempt to rescue their natural environment from 

desecration. Before the term Ecocriticism was coined by William 

Rueckert in 1978, African writers had already started decrying the rape 

of their natural environment, by foreigners. For instance, “Okara's poem 

“Piano and Drums” is a subtle nostalgia of the primal life of Africa 

before foreign intervention, and the exploitation of Africa's natural 

environment” (Ayinuola 42). He also adds that, “The Fisherman's 

Invocation” and “The Call of River Nun” are poems that have a leaning 

towards the purity of the natural environment of the Niger Delta before 

the negative effects of oil exploration” (31).

In a similar way, Sikiru Adeyemi Ogundokun interprets John Pepper 

Clark's poem “Night Rain” as an eco-poem following the fact that it 

reveals the intrinsic relationship between literature and the 

environment, and the representation of nature, which constitute the 

environment in a literary work. All this points to the fact that 

environmentalism had always found great expression in African literary 

studies, before Rueckert finally used the term ecocriticism to delineate 

the relationship between literature and ecology. In fact, in Africa, there 

had been a communion between man and his ecological space, and that 

relationship was maintained until Western capitalists violated African 

spatiality, fabricated social spaces, and broke that sweet bond, with their 

cruel activities on the virgin land of Africa. These excesses are what they 

refer to as modernization, which, in itself, is a phenomenon of self-

negation. This modernisation fails to recognize that there exists an 

inseparable tie between man and his natural environment as against the 

African's belief that, “the survival of man is entirely tied to his 

environment (Ogundokun 25).

From the above explication, one can affirm that Emily Potter's 

supposition about ecocriticism, where she seems to restrict ecocritical 

studies exclusively to Western literary canon, seems racially affected in 

a way. In her words:

Literature and the environment as a socio-political issue are of 

course familiar bedfellows in western literature, and their 

relationship in the latter part of the twentieth century appeared 

promising to literary critics, in a context of increasing public 

discourse on ecological shifts and environmental horrors (2).

If, however, Potter's claim with regard to the mutual exclusivity of 

ecocriticism is to be taken seriously, it must be from the angle that 

modernisation, − the cradle of the global environmental problems 

plaguing man today− originates in the West. Potter's assumption must be 

reacted to through the post-colonial critical prism, following his failure 

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 the Ecocritical Praxis: An Insight into Tanure Ojaide’s Delta Blues and Home Songs



to take into cognizance the rich exposition of the African environment in 

African literature. As evident in African literature, African writers are 

cognizant of the endemic pollution, environmental degradation and 

other ecological problems that are currently ravaging the world− Africa 

not excluded, hence their environmental agitations.  In their quest 

towards rescuing and conserving the ecological space, we see writers' 

unwavering literary and even non-literary environmentalism in Africa. 

In pre-colonial Africa, man had great respect for his environment, and 

would not mistreat it for any reason following “traditional African 

ethical view”. Chuka Albert Okoye is of the opinion that this ethical 

view presupposes that

…nature has its respect which must be accorded it lest man is 

bound to suffer for it. Thus, despite the fact that man is at the center 

of the ethical system, he does not have a monopoly of it. Man seeks 

to preserve his environment according to the traditional African 

system not just for himself but for the future generation and in 

honor of the tradition (reference to ancestors and worship). The 

African traditional system is replete with this weak 

anthropocentricism following their belief that man is a keeper of 

nature not a master to it (143-144).

Since African traditional system had deep-seated roots in weak 

anthropocentricism, the pre-colonial African regarded his environment 

with utmost respect and treated it with caution, because any harm done 

to the environment is invariably harm done to man. But the case varied 

largely upon the intrusion of the civilisers, the 'enlightenment' 

missionaries and the eventual colonisers, who failed to acknowledge 

any intrinsic nexus between man and his environment. In western 

societies, anthropocentricism takes centre stage, and their values are 

constructed from this position. This is why they keep engaging in 

debates on whether or not nature has an autonomous existence as distinct 

from that of man. Byron Caminero-Santangelo tells us thus “Anglo-

American ecocriticism frequently embraces the ethical position that 

humans need to do away with “anthropocentrism” by rejecting the 

nature-culture dualism which objectifies nature and places the category 

of culture/humanity at the center of things” (699). In Africa, this is not a 

subject for debate, because while they may obviously have autonomous 

existence, they remain intertwined, hence, interdependent on each other, 

burying therefore the binary idea of superiority and inferiority. This is 

the mind-set of the African, which sets him worlds apart from his 

western counterpart. Thus, in African literary ecology, the ecocritic may 

not set out to answer the same pressing questions that western literary 

ecological critics bother themselves with. African ecocritics simply 

struggle to conscientise the people on the need to rekindle their severed 

relationship with their natural environment, so that man, like a prodigal, 

would return to bygone days, and begin to enjoy the fullness of nature he 

once enjoyed. So, Jonathan Bate's revelation of what constitutes a 

critical discourse in western literary ecology−“A central question in 

environmental ethics is whether to regard humankind as part of nature or 

apart from nature”(8)− is of less relevance in African literary ecology. 

However, the African ecocritic, in his enterprise, also bothers himself 

with the question: “what is the place of creative imagining and writing in 

the complex set of relationships between humankind and environment, 

between mind and world, between thinking, being and dwelling?” (8). 

This remains an essential meeting point between the African ecocritical 

scholar and his Western counterpart.

  

Generally, ecocritics “lay emphasis on the preservation of landscape in 

order to save the human race”(Fenn 114). He adds that, “Ecocriticism 

not only lays emphasis on the 'harmony' of humanity and nature but also 

talks about the destruction caused to nature by the changes which take 

place in the modern world for most of which man is directly responsible” 

(Fenn 114). This constitutes the ultimate focus of African literary 

ecologists. They recognise that things have changed greatly, especially 

negatively, and they remain perturbed by the current state of their natural 

environment. This worrisome state is often located in modernisation and 

the gross expansion of global capitalism whose strength springs from 

modernisation itself. 

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There is no doubt about the extent to which modernisation has powered 

the expansive energies of global capitalist values and practices. So, the 

African writer now has an environmentalist role to play to help in saving 

both man and the natural environment, from total destructionbecause he 

knows that the death of the natural environment would invariably toll the 

demise of the entire humanity.   

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

In Africa, the quest for environmental justice is the commonest 

engagement of literary writers of today, and this “Environmental Justice 

reflects justice not only in human communities but also towards other 

species, ecosystems, landscapes, and the environment as a whole” (Sahu 

548).In the Niger-Delta landscape, writers struggle to avert the harsh 

realities of “Acid rain” which “acidifies their lakes and streams and 

damages their vegetation.” This is done by conscientizing the people on 

the likely damage gas flaring and bombing of oil pipelines have on 

human beings, the atmosphere, and the entire human and animal 

environment. The creative writer, like the non-literary writer and other 

environmental activists, share the revolutionary vision of the group 

Friends of the Earth Nigeria, as captured by Godwin Uyi Ojo and Nosa 

Tokunbor, who state thus:

Our vision is of a peaceful and sustainable world based on societies 

living in harmony with nature. We envision a society of 

interdependent people living in dignity, wholeness and fulfilment 

in which equity and human and peoples' rights are realised. This 

will be a society built upon peoples' sovereignty and participation 

(8).

From every indication, “The world of literature throngs with works 

dealing with beauty and power of nature. However, the concern for 

ecology and the threat that the continuous misuse of our environment 

poses on humanity have only recently caught the attention of the 

writers” (Fenn 115). Fenn's assertion is true to some extent but certainly 

not in its entirety, especially in the African context. This is so because 

Africans have always been aware of the environmental problem with 

which they have been faced. They knew this fact from the epoch of the 

colonising force, and they started writing about it when they developed 

the knack to reduce their creative imagination to paper. This cry has 

continued to be heard. For the above reason, Fenn's claim would be 

much more appropriate if it declares that there has recently being a 

tremendous increase in literary works expressing solidarity with nature, 

and the growing havoc being done to our environment and its 

repercussion on man. That way, Fenn would simply have expressed an 

outstanding opinion on literary ecological studies in contemporary 

times. 

Another assertion worth responding to is the one by William Slaymaker. 

Though an African literary critic, Slaymaker does not seem to be correct 

in his investigation of African writers' engagement with ecological or 

environmental issues. He declares that:

General anthologies, review, and summaries of black African 

literary and critical practices from the late 1980s through the 1990s 

bear out the thesis that global ecocritical responses to what is 

happening to the earth have had an almost imperceptible African 

echo. Books that deal with black African criticism and literary 

theory rarely take up environmental or ecological topics (689).

.

It could be true that, 'critical practices' in Africa have not responded 

ecocritically to the issues as stated above. But we refuse to accept, 

predicated on the evidence seen in the works of earlier writers, the 

assumption that 'literary practices' expressed virtually no concern for the 

plaguing global environmental and ecological crisis. Obviously, the 

reason why critical scholars could not respond to these environmental 

challenges is because the critical tool called ecocriticism had not been 

coined. But they, however, condemned the damage being done to the 

earth. Wole Soyinka's SwampDwellers, Ayi Kwei Armah's The Beautiful 

Once are not Born, Alex La Guma's A Walk in the Night, Ngugi's A Grain 

of Wheat, in addition to the ones mentioned early on,also explore the 

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 the Ecocritical Praxis: An Insight into Tanure Ojaide’s Delta Blues and Home Songs



theme of nature, environmental pollution and degradation. And these 

literary works are a product of the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. Truly, there 

might not have been the preponderance of creative works exploring the 

degradation of the earth in earlier decades, but there were still works that 

responded vigorously to the issue. The only factor that delayed the 

expansive exploration of environmental or ecological criticism is the 

absence of a generic theory. That is,a theory that categorically underpins 

ecological issues, (and like Marxism would reveal class struggle and the 

mode of production, and how it affects concrete history), uncovers the 

hidden elements of ecologism in any given literary text. Thus, if 

ecocriticism as a modern literary theory had been coined three or more 

decades earlier, it would have received adequate literary and critical 

responses just like every other sociological theory that has found 

expression in African literary circle. 

Though he claims that ecocriticism is a 'global movement', Slaymaker 

uses “a primarily Anglo-American ecocritical framework” (Caminero-

Santangelo 698) as a paradigm for the appraisal of texts, “to determine if 

a piece of writing is properly environmental”(698). This surfaces as a 

serious pitfall in Slaymaker's critical evaluation of African ecocritical 

output from the 80s and 90s. As we have earlier mentioned, there are 

questions that bother the western ecocritic, but are taken with levity, in 

Africa, because they have, from the primordial soup, found answers in 

orthodox African cultural values and practices. So, it is improper for 

Slaymaker to judge African literary ecological imagination using 

American and British ecocritical criteria and principles. With this kind 

of engagement, one is forced to think and argue from the post-colonial 

viewpoint. Such argument may include the justification that Africa is 

detached from 'global' network, and her values cannot be incorporated 

into the differing sets of values that make up any global engagement or 

action. Hence, what is global is in every sense Western, since anything 

that falls outside the values and practices of the West is grossly deficient 

and irrelevant in determining what is acceptable as global. If 

ecocriticism is truly global in outlook, it should be able to take into 

account certain ecological, environmental, and cultural realities of the 

African universe in relation to the African being. This is so because, 

Africans have inextricable relationship with their natural environment, 

and have come to concern themselves so much with the crises plaguing 

it, with concerted efforts made towards its rescue and conservation. But, 

this singular act, namely, the failure of Western ecocritics to integrate 

African ecological practices into what they term 'global' (which is by 

every means Western), makes ecocriticism a theory that could be fully 

realised based on cultural beliefs, values and practices, of the milieu of 

the text.  

  

If one takes into cognizance Glotfelty Fromm's assertion that 

“environmental writing supports a dualism that asserts nature as totally 

separate from humanity while ecocritical writing unifies the two, or at 

least analyzes the relationship between them” (xx), one would be quick 

to locate a chasm between the Anglo-American and the African praxis of 

ecocriticism. In Africa, the union between humanity and nature borders 

more on a natural bond than any artificially fabricated nexus. The 

traditional African is born with the knowledge that he is his environment 

and his environment him, and not like the American or British, who 

focuses on unifying man and nature artificially. So, against Western 

misapprehension and bias that, the African does not understand his 

environment, and hence needs the Westernised African, or at worse, the 

Western critic to interpret for him his natural environment is an illusion. 

In fact, it is another way of imposing imperial culture on colonies, so that 

their cultural practices would continue to maintain a hegemonic space in 

'global' cultural discourses. 

Ecocriticism is like feminism, because the culture in which it operates 

plays an indispensable role when it is used to evaluate a text. This is so 

because; human attitude towards nature and the ecosphere vary 

substantially from culture to culture. In traditional African society, when 

modernity had nothing to do with her, man depended solely on nature for 

survival. Herbs and plants served man extensively. Mountains, hills, and 

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 the Ecocritical Praxis: An Insight into Tanure Ojaide’s Delta Blues and Home Songs



trees were also there to serve man. But upon the intrusion of modernity 

or western civilisation, everything changed, and then the need to be in 

tune with it became paramount. Roads were constructed, which meant 

the destruction of mountains, trees, and plants and species, without 

taken into cognizance the essence of nature to the African man in his 

natural habitat. Then, furniture replaced seats constructed with clay, and 

the hewed trees were mostly exported by the colonialists to the Centre, 

for commercial purposes. Like Feminism, culture matters greatly when 

ecocriticism is mentioned, because of variations in cultural experiences, 

beliefs, and values.  

At this point, we can infer that though it started in the west, ecocriticism 

has spread across the world, and has since become an established literary 

tradition in the African cosmos. In fact, in the last few decades, 

environmentalism and the study of man and the ecosystem have become 

a fast-spreading area of literary engagement, which has found a 

ubiquitous voice in many works of African creative writers. Slaymaker 

contends thus: 

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 function 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 (683).

Also, in his appraisal of eco-criticism in African literature with regard to 

the journey thus far, Byron Caminero-Santangelo articulates thus: 

In the past fifteen years, African environmental activism has been 

brought to the world's attention through the martyrdom of Ken Saro 

Wiwa and more recently, by the awarding of the Nobel Peace prize 

to Wangari Maathai. These figures point not only to the ways that 

Africans have mobilized against environmental degradation, but 

also to the grave environmental problems faced by Africa which 

have become, especially in conjunction with social problems, a 

significant threat to its present and future-well-being(698).

In Africa, environmental activism has continued to grow tremendously. 

This growth is often attributed to the global struggle against ecological 

crisis. By writing about the degradation of their environment, the 

African writer aims to demonstrate his drive to play his part in the 

ecological struggles. The modern African writer cannot be silent 

because, “more than a century of imperial and neo-imperial attitudes and 

practices has resulted in intractable environmental problems as well as 

in the need for new kinds of environmental discourses” (Caminero-

Santangelo & Myers 2). The attitudes have further compounded the 

environmental crisis ravaging the African society. This is supported by 

Nwagbara who states that ecological imperialism “has left the Nigerian 

society environmentally battered” (19). This accounts for the reason 

why, like Ojaide, the African creative writer “allows the social facts in 

his lived environment to find expression in his art”(23).

African ecocritical writers work round the clock to ensure that nature's 

wounds are healed, and the hitherto inextricable relationship that 

traditionally existed between man and nature resurfaces to replace what 

currently obtains between humanity and the natural environment. This 

way, man's negative attitudes towards his ecological space would 

terminate, and careful and positive attitudes would be what issues from 

man to her, and then our ecosystem would rejuvenate. According to 

Hamoud Yahya Ahmed & Ruzy Suliza Hashim, “ecosystems are highly 

sensitive and frequently disrupted by human misdeeds and ill-treatment 

of the natural world, leading to extinction of species of plants and 

animals whose ecosystems have been compromised”(9).

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 the Ecocritical Praxis: An Insight into Tanure Ojaide’s Delta Blues and Home Songs



The entire impulse and focus behind both African and Anglo-American 

ecocriticism is rightly captured in the words of  Shoba and Nagaraj thus:

Now-a-days, almost all people have turned their attention towards 

the planet of life, the earth. The ecosystem which accommodates 

human beings acts reflexively. Whatever humans do to the Mother 

Earth, have the deeds reflected on them. A sudden attraction 

towards the ecosystem came about when scientists found a hole in 

the ozone layer. Then the people began probing the planet more 

and more. They became more conscious of the environment in 

which they live (639).

So “When people slowly started understanding what is happening to the 

ecosystem where they live, they started relating the ecological study – 

which considered the ecological problems like pollution, global 

warming, etc. – to literature” (Shoba & Nagaraj 639). This has also been 

the situation in Africa, where ecocriticism has become domesticated, 

and has being growing considerately due to the indiscriminate 

exploitation of nature, especially birthed and encouraged by 

colonialism. Gitanjali Gogoi's avowal clearly illustrates and justifies the 

grounds on which ecocritical practices started and has continued to 

expound, in Africa: 

The present day environmental predicament is a sure result of the 

age-old practice of exploitation of nature and abuse of the 

environment for the benefit of human civilization. While the 

reshaping of nature has been executed throughout human history, 

the episode of European colonialism is the most outstanding 

example of human interference with nature as the whole enterprise 

of colonization was based on the idea of exploiting nature and its 

resources. The Western cultural tradition of using nature for human 

benefits was most strongly propounded through colonialism. In 

fact, it is not only during the era of colonization, but the practice 

against nature is being carried out in the neocolonial period in the 

present day circumstances. Therefore the blame for environmental 

crisis falls primarily on the West as it is inspired by the Western 

principle of separation of the human from the non-human (1).

We can, therefore, conclude that, “even though 'Ecocriticism' is 

comparatively new as the movement started only in the late 20th 

century, study of nature and man in literature dates back to the ancient 

times”(Chingangbam 60), and it has continued to surge due to increase 

in the havoc constantly wreaked on our ecological sphere by local and 

foreign capitalists. African literary writers have also contributed 

significantly to its growth, just the same way the West has. If by any 

means the West has engaged more committedly in literary ecological 

activism, then it is a way of cleaning off the mess they have created with 

their 'civilising missions' and inventions, as posited by Gogoi in the 

foregoing assertion.

Ojaide's Poetry and the Ecocritical Tradition

Nwagbara is of the opinion that “Ojaide uses literature for 

environmentalist purposes. He places premium on the biotic 

community—its sustainability and preservation” (28). This artistic 

vision is fervently demonstrated in the poem 'When Green was the 

Lingua Franca”, in which he unequivocally paints the idyllic landscape 

retrospectively and juxtaposes it with the current state of the same 

environment that once paralleled the much talked-about Eden Garden. 

The word 'green' in the title of the poem is symbolic of fertility, thereby 

defining the Niger-Delta ecology as a fertile landscape before its 

desecration. In this poem, Ojaide takes a historic and retrospective 

journey into his blissful childhood, and relays to us, how much of thrills 

and fascination defined it:

My childhood stretched

One unbroken park,

Teeming with life.

In the forest green was the lingua franca

With many dialects (12)

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COOU JOFOCUS: COOU Journal of Folklore and Cultural Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2021 Jude Zeal ADEGOKE, Grace OBADA & Otaru Friday JOHN: African Cultural Spatiality and

 the Ecocritical Praxis: An Insight into Tanure Ojaide’s Delta Blues and Home Songs



He goes on to reveal the seascape and its fullness before toxic wastes 

were unfeelingly sent into it, killing its inhabitants: “I remember 

erhuvwudjayorho/Such a glamorous fish”. The poet seems to be 

expressing great pain over the disappearance of this beautiful creature of 

nature. In his reminiscence, he continues to recount the cordial 

relationship man used to maintain with nature, how he (the poet) dashed 

freely into the Eden Garden to obtain whatever fruit he wanted, and how 

beautiful it was at that time when he could commune with Nature. 

Before the rape of the natural ecological landscape of the Deltas, Ojaide 

tells us:

Snails and koto lured me 

to tear through tangles

that seasoned my soles 

to defy every distance.

Urhurhu grapes coloured

my tongue scarlet,

the owe apple fell to me

as cherries and breadfruit

on wind-blessed day (12)

 

In the first line of the above excerpt, Ojaide particularly humanises 

snails and kotos by personifying them with the exclusive human 

attribute of luring. This means therefore that, they too had tangible 

existence and could give happiness, as we see in the poet who 

abandoned himself to the beautiful images of these creatures and 

covered distances just to behold them. We see also 'the owe apple' falling 

willingly to the poet, in form of an embrace, an action only humans are 

capable of carrying out. The entire essence is to highlight man's hitherto 

original closeness and rapport with nature, and nature's own consistent 

desire to satisfy man.

The poet's sublime childhood in a stainless, well-afforested, 

environment is seen in the last part of the second stanza. At this time, we 

are invited to inhabit a forest of assorted trees; a forest of a thousand 

trees, and share the exuberance of a child overwhelmed by Nature and its 

aesthetic bounties. He gallivants endlessly in a forest, playing with 

Nature. He tells us that:

The cotton trees made me

Fly for tossed-out fluffs;

The gum tree took fingerprints

Before invisible policemen

Ikere froglets fell from skies (12) 

His admiration for the bucolic scene and the halcyon days continues, as 

he recalls how fishermen laboured less but harvested fish in abundance. 

We are told how “the skipper-fish overflow/culverts into fisher's 

ambush. This was, when Nature could still conveniently serve man 

without complaints; when everything was still green and the ecology 

was in its best shape. 

The above is one pole of the dialectic created by Ojaide to compare and 

contrast nature as it was and as it is at the moment, when man has 

fragmented it with sabres of greed. This second pole lays bare the 

pollution, despoliation, desecration and degradation of the Niger-Delta 

ecology and its corollary effects on the biosphere, biodiversity and the 

ecosystem. In fact, the ozone layer has become so dangerously depleted 

that species have become consequently endangered. We are told how:

…Shell broke the bond

with quakes and a hell

of flares. Stoking a hearth

under God's very behind (13)

Pained by this deprivation of his idyllic ecological space, the poet 

continues to articulate gory and devastating images which divorced him 

and his people from Nature, and sounded a death knell on the 

environment and the entire biosphere. He attributes this inhumanity to 

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the multinational industry, which incessantly engages in gas flaring and 

emission of other noxious wastes into the atmosphere and seascape. He 

reveals that:

Explosion of shells to under

Mine grease-black gold

Drove the seasons mental

And to walk on their heads (13)

In the third to the last stanza, the poet bemoans the demise of some 

creatures of Nature, which gave man succour and sustained his 

existence. Here again, we see the personification of trees as creatures, 

with heads to behead. This kind of personification reveals Ojaide's 

perception of these plants as human beings. The tone of the poem unveils 

Ojaide's disappointment over the capitalist activities that have so 

damaged the delicate fabrics of nature, the same nature that has served 

man altruistically in all spheres. Ojaide laments:

I see victims of arson

Wherever my restless soles

Take me to bear witness

The Ethiope waterfall 

wiped out by prospectors?

so many trees beheaded

and streams mortally poisoned (13) 

We are again to sympathise with the poet whose ecology is now bereft of 

its natural endowments. The herbs which provide healing to the ailing 

have been destroyed and can serve man no more, and the herbalists have 

been inevitably rendered useless, with their communion with nature 

abruptly broken. Ojaide states thus:

Now I commune with ghosts

of neighbours and providers

whose healing hands of leaves

and weeds have been amputated (14)

In the poem “Seasons” Ojaide continues to lament the pathetic state of 

the Niger-Delta landscape, its despoliation, his people's deprivation and 

marginalisation. He draws our attention to how imperialists' 

exploitation of oil in the region has done a great disservice to not only 

the landscape, but the seascape, in which case the people no longer have 

access to potable water. The imagery of 'oil slick' reminds us of the oil 

spillage that ravaged the area decades ago. He tells us that 'Our towns 

rose from riverbanks of barter/Once the waters sustained colouring 

from oil slick (15).

Knowing full-well the grave damage this spillage caused and still liable 

to cause, it became imperative to liaise with the necessary authority so as 

to rescue the ecology from further destruction and help in the fight 

against global warming currently plaguing our world. But those who 

took up the challenge are sent off 'from the promised land' to continue to 

wallow in their suffering. The 'promised land' is a Biblical allusion, and 

it delineates an oasis, and this paradise is Abuja, where the lords reside 

and work in cahoots with the multinational companies exploiting the 

Niger-Delta and destroying its fragile ecology, with repercussions on its 

habitants. In this poem, Abuja is again personified, and at this time it is a 

metonymy that stands for the people occupying the seat of authority and 

power; it is a human being who receives complaints. Their effort to 

rescue the environment from further pillage and revive it is captured in:

our constitution cannot remain the same again−

we selected delegates to take our prayers to Abuja,

but guns scared them from the promised land (15) 

In the poem “Wails” Ojaide laments the unlawful execution of an 

environmental activist, who had attempted to salvage the situation in the 

Niger-Delta region. Everybody tends to mourn their beloved 

revolutionary, who knew the essence of Nature and had championed the 

war against its destruction and its people. The poet reveals how:

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 the Ecocritical Praxis: An Insight into Tanure Ojaide’s Delta Blues and Home Songs



  Streets echo with wails

A terrible thing has struck the land,

everyone is covered with shame or sorrow−

this death exceeds other deaths

They murdered a favourite son,

this news cannot be a hoax;

they have hanged a favourite son

and eight other bearers of truth(18)

This tragic execution of this warrior constitutes great pain and worries to 

the poet and his people. With rhetorical questions, the poet seeks to 

know how they hope to overcome their pathetic environmental 

devastation, and bring joy to the land. He asks:

Who will make me laugh, 

Who will bring Bassey &Company to life?

the lingua franca of the coastline?

Who will tell the forest of flowers?

Who will traverse the darkling plain of the delta?

Who will stand in front as the iroko shield

to regain the stolen birthright of millions?

It's for his immeasurable services

that the giant's remembered

There will be no end to this wail (18)

The resistance activities of the dead warrior are certainly immeasurable 

and profound. These account for the poet's interrogation on whether 

there will ever be anyone who can manifest such valour and altruism in 

the environmental struggles and the struggle against deprivation and 

marginalisation. The impact of his revolutionary measures is 

ubiquitous, that is why “There will be no end to this wail.” (18) Their 

defence is broken and they have become much more endangered than 

they were, since their messiah and other fighters are gone:

The hardwood shield is broken, 

the people are exposed to a storm of abuse;

the diviner's spell is broken

& everybody's left in the open (19)

At this point, he resorts to Aridon, and conjures him up in his readiness to 

fight the battle for his people and his environment and the entire 

ecosystem:

Aridon, give me the voice

to raise beyond high walls.

In one year I have seen my forest of trees cut down,

Now dust taunts my memory

If I don't open my mouth,

I will be a dumb-and-deaf

Who's unable to forewarn

After a bad dream (17)

The poem “Delta Blues” begins with a reminiscence of the Arcadian life 

of the poet's childhood, and he is plunged into nostalgia, causing him to 

paint the pitiable images of the present state of his environment, which 

sharply contrasts with what he had known as a child. In fact, he calls the 

environment of his childhood 'paradise'. He states thus:

This share of paradise, the delta of my birth,

Reels from an immeasurable wound

Barrels of alchemical draught flow

From this hurt to the unquestionable world

That lights up its life in a blind trust.(21)

He goes on to list the resources with which the environment is endowed 

and had enjoyed before humans broke the bond with nature, via toxic 

substances and negative activities in the biosphere. These resources 

were yields of nature that provided man with satisfaction (both 

materially and otherwise). But nature has been made unproductive and 

frail by man's unhealthy relationship with the natural environment and 

the entire ecosystem. Plants are withering, animals are disappearing, 

their natural habitat has become inhabitable and endangered, the seas 

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have become toxic, murdering sea creatures, and the fisherman stripped 

of his means of livelihood. The farmer who no longer has arable and 

fertile land to cultivate is not left out, as well as the soul-killing drought 

and famine midwifed by man's insensitivity to the demands of the 

natural environment. He sadly tells us that:

The rivers are dark-veined,

a course of perennial draught

this home of salt and fish

stilted in mangroves, market of barter,

always welcomes others−

hosts the guests flourished 

on palm oil, yams and garri

the home of plants and birds 

least expected a stampede;

there's no refuge east or west

north or south of this paradise(21) 

The metaphors and imagery in the above excerpt suggest that the region 

was a place that was home to everyone because of its evergreen, with its 

rivers that overcame heat and prevented diseases that could result from 

excessive heat and exposure to scorching sun. It was a self-sufficient 

land in terms of foodstuffs and natural resources. But today 

deforestation has claimed these trees, and the plants claimed by 

contamination of the soil. All this has synergised to inflict the people 

with diseases and penury. At this point one is prompted to query: what 

other disservice could be done to nature than the one already painted? 

Ojaide reveals the glamour that defined the land and how it attracted 

outsiders:

Did others not envy my evergreen,

which no reason or season could steal

but only brighten with desire?

Did others not envy the waters

that covered me from sunstroke,

scourge of others the year round?(21)

The use of rhetorical questions in the above stanza is quite emphatic, and 

draws our attention to the state of the original Delta landscape and 

ultimately prompts us to decry the great loss that the environment as well 

as the ecology has suffered in the course of time as a result of man's 

shortcomings. 

Ojaide's lamentation does not end here; he goes further to uncover how 

counterproductive the oil which should be a great source of joy is at the 

moment. It is a blessing-turn-doom. So instead of living in luxury, 

penury and sorrow describe the state of these hapless people. He 

achieves this with the concrete use of symbolisms and personifications. 

He says:

My nativity gives immortal pain

masked in barrels of oil−

I stew in the womb of fortune.

I live in the deathbed

prepared by a cabal of brokers

breaking the peace of centuries 

& tainting not only a thousand rivers,

But lifeblood from beginning,

But scorching the air and soil (21)

He finds this whole scenario pathetic and wants urgent change in the 

status quo. But who are those to fight fervently and altruistically in a 

world where the self takes precedence over communal interest. At this 

point, the poet reckons with the selfless engagement of the late activists, 

spearheaded by Ken Saro Wiwa. He acknowledges them as true to the 

cause of the people and their environment, and then begins to wonder if 

there are people who can transcend their bounds in the course of the 

revolutionary struggles. He concludes that there are none. He says, for 

instance: 

Nobody can go further than those mounds

in the fight to right chronic habits

of greed and every wrong of power (23)

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In “Elegy for Nine Warriors” Ojaide reflects on the valiant struggles of 

executed environmental revolutionaries, who had always stood up for 

the environment and the people of the Niger-Delta region. They 

understood the benefits of nature to man and strived to insulate it from 

total destruction. These are “those I remember in my song” and they are 

expected to “outlive this ghoulish season”, because they were those who 

walked “back erect from the stake.”(25) He uses a paradox to a certain 

effect here. We are made to believe that they remain alive even in death, 

because they will produce avatars to continue the struggle. This is what 

is meant when he states that “the nine start their life after death”. He 

believes their death will only spur more people to action and engender a 

call to arms, instead of dampening people's spirits. He tells us:

The hangman has made his case,

delivered nine heads through the sunpost

and sored his eyes from sleepless nights.

The nine start their life after death

as the street takes over their standard (25)

These valiant warriors are simply unforgettable, because they lived and 

died for the cause of the environment and the marginalised population of 

the Niger-Delta region. He states that, “nine marchers who died 

carrying/our destiny on their broad chests−/will surely outlive the 

blood-laden season” (25). 

 

Conclusion

In the poems analysed above, Ojaide explores the society from the prism 

of ecocriticism. He draws readers' attention to the damage currently 

being suffered the African environment, which comes as an upshot of 

man's exploitation of his natural environment, for his selfish interest. We 

see Ojaide's agitations against environmental degradationand his 

campaign for man's changed attitude towards nature, thus establishing 

the ecocritical praxis in the African cultural space. Dialectically, he 

creates an avenue for people to see the likely benefits nature would yield 

to man when his attitude is positive, and then the lack that man would 

experience when he privileges negative attitudes to it. He achieves this 

through a retrospective journey into his idealistic childhood, when man 

tended the earth like its own child, and the earth in turn served man 

abundantly. It was a time when varieties of food were available to man; 

when seafoods had not turned scarce commodities, and animals were 

also available as meat in man's food. It was a time when man had free 

access to varieties of fruit, and like the Biblical Eden Garden, man ate 

them at will. Also, vegetables of different species were sufficiently 

available to man. But today, as Ojaide captures, those bounties of nature 

have disappeared, and just like the punitive measure meted out to Adam 

and Eve upon the fall, man now finds himself deprived of those things he 

used to access with much ease. The hitherto fertile and attractive 

landscape has now become infertile and unattractive as a result of the 

release and flaring of toxic substances into rivers, land and the 

atmosphere from the greedy exploration of oil in the region by 

imperialist multinational companies in cahoots with the Federal 

Government of Nigeria. Today, fishermen and women, farmers, and all 

those who used to earn a living from the fullness of nature have now 

become disempowered economically, and many of them have taken to 

arms. All this portrayal is a pointer to environmentalism; the presence of 

the ecocritical theory, in African literary circle. 

The African natural environment as captured in Ojaide's poems is a 

degraded one calling for urgent rescue and conservation. It is an 

environment suffering untold despoliation where African 

environmentalists are striving hard to preserve, conserve, recreate, in 

order to avert an environmental apocalypse. The fact that Africans now 

inhabit a world plagued by unabating ecological crises, and have joined 

in the global fight against the environmental crises, is enough reason 

why Africa's environment should constitute a global concern.

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The Refection of Voodoo in Toni Morrison's Sula and 
Tade Adegbindin's The Saint

Nasir Hashim

Department of English and Drama, 

Kaduna State University, Kaduna

nasirhashimhydara78@gmail.com

08135295865

&

Hajara B.K. Mohammed

Department of Languages, 

College of Administrative Studies and Social Sciences

Kaduna Polytechnic

hbkmohammed@kadunapolytechnic.edu.ng

Abstract

Despite the existence of Islam and Christianity, lots of Africans and their 

displaced relatives in America tend to retain certain ideas associated 

with traditional religion, such as voodoo, occultism and magic. This 

paper traced and examined these ideas in Toni Morrison's Sula and Tade 

Adegbindin's The Saint. The paper exposed how some Africans African-

Americans blend Christian practices with voodoo, magic and occultism. 

It highlighted how religious perception varies in these communities. 

Also, the paper exposed the category of people that regards voodoo and 

occultism as relevant religious traditions even in the twenty first century. 

As text-base, the study relied on textual materials: the primary and the 

secondary texts. The study found that many Africans and African-

Americans practice syncretism.  

Keywords: Voodoo, occultism, myth, magic and syncretism 

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Sula and Tade Adegbindin’s The Saint

mailto:nasirhashimhydara78@gmail.com
mailto:hbkmohammed@kadunapolytechnic.edu.ng

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