OIL POLITICS AND ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION IN IBIWARI IKIRIKO'SOILY TEARS OF THE DELTA

Abstract

Poems provide a unique window into diverse perspectives, cultures and experiences, promoting empathy and understanding. This paper therefore, examined oil politics and environmental degradation in Ibiwari Ikiriko’s Oily Tears of the Delta. Ikiriko’s Oily Tears is a collection of thirty poems, twenty-three of which are on the oil motif. Out of hirty poems in the collections, twelve were analyzed and used for this study. These are; “Evening Already”, “Oily Tears” ,“The Call of the River Nun”,“Okara’s Nun”, Okara’s, Delta Tears”, “Remembering SaroWiwa,”, “For Ken” , “Ogoni Agony,“To Alfred Diete-Spiff”, “Rivers at 25” and “Oily Rivers”. Ikiriko is seen as an important Nigerian poet from the Niger Delta who has published a lot of poetry collections that expose the problems of degradation, oil exploitation and environmental
pollution. Minority rights appear to be more contentious wherever resource-distribution is contested. Oil and Power are linked inextricably in the poetry that Ibiwari Ikiriko has written on the Niger Delta mosaic. Power determines control and dispossession. Thus, the poet has depicted the attitude of the state and its centres of control towards the condition of the oilbearing communities. The exercise of state might is cast as a strategy of repression which is designed to ensure accumulation for the state and its privileged entities. This paper is to examine the extent to which the poems of Ikiriko, stand as mirrors on various sites of tension and conflict in the Niger Delta