The Boko Haram Kidnappings and Islamist Militancy In Nigeria: An Ecocritical Analysis of Habila’s The Chibok Girls

Confidence Gbolo Sanka,ORCID iD  Charity Azumi Issaka, Patricia Gustafson-Asamoah

Issue: Vol.1  No.1 May 2020  Article 2 pp. 11-20
DOI : https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.2020052   |   Published online 1st May 2020.
© 2020 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Views: 1,262
720 Downloads

DOWNLOAD PDF
Ecocriticism, a study of literature in relation to the environment has become one of the tools post-colonial writers use in addressing environmental concerns. The environment is seen as a character acting along with humans in literary texts. A violation of nature therefore affects all the characters. The urgency for examining literature from an ecological angle is therefore justified. Anchored on ecocriticism, this paper adopts a qualitative method analysis to argue that corruption, coups d’état and the activities of terrorists create a hostile environment that needs serious discourse engagement. This paper discusses the environmental issues raised in Habila’s The Chibok Girls: The Boko Haram Kidnappings and Islamist Militancy in Nigeria. The study concludes that the Nigerian environment, and by extension the African one, is at the brink of destruction because there is a causal relationship between corruption, coups d’état, terrorism and ecophobia. The first one breeds the others.

Keywords: Boko Haram, Ecocriticism, Corruption, Nigeria, Terrorism

Bakhtin, Mikhailovich Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, ed. by Michael Holquist, trans. Caryl E. and Holquist M., Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970.

Bakhtin, Mikhailovich Mikhail. Speech Genres and Other Essays, Texas: University of Texas Press Slavic Series, 1986.

Beck, Ulrich. Risk Society: Towards A New Modernity, trans. Mark Ritter. London: Sage, 1992.

Buhari, Muhammadu.“Boko Haram Technically Defeated – Buhari”, Punch, February.6, 2016, https://punchng.com/boko-haram-technically-defeated-buhari-insists/, accessed on 19th April 2020.

Buhari, Muhammadu. “Dapchi Abduction, Rann Attack Won’t Happen Again, Says Buhari”, The Nation, March 7, 2018. Accessed April 19, 2020. https://thenationonlineng.net/dapchi-rann-attack-wont-happen-says-buhari/

Buhari, Muhammadu. “B/Haram Bombings Last Kicks of Dying Horse – Buhari”, Daily Trust, Nov.27,2017. Accessed April 19, 2020.https:// www.dailytrust.com.ng/b-haram-bombings-last-kicks-of-dying-horse-buhari.html

Cook, David. “The Rise of Boko Haram in Nigeria” CTC Sentinel, 4 no9 (2011). Accessed May 5, 2017. https://www.ctc. usma.edu/posts/the-rise-of-boko-haram-in-nigeria

Coupe, Laurence. The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism. London: Routledge, 2000.

Courtois, Cédric. “In This Country, The Very Air We Breathe Is Politics”: Helon Habila and The Flowing Together of Politics and Poetics, Commonwealth Essays and Studies 40, no. 2(2018):55-68. https://doi.org/10.4000/ces.289

Eisler, Riane “The Gaia Tradition and Partnership Future: An Ecofeminist Manifesto, in Diamond, Irene and Ornstein, Gloria, Reweaving the World, (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1987) 23-34.

Estok, Simon C.“Post 9/11 and Narratives of Life Writing, Conflict, and Environmental Crisis”, CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 17, no.3(2015): https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.2780.

Estok, Simon C. “Ecocriticism in An Age of Terror”, CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 15, no. 1(2013): https://doi.org/10.7771/1481-4374.2180.

Garrard, Greg. “The Romantics’ Views of Nature”. In Spirit of the Environment, Religion, Value and Environmental Concern, edited by David E. Cooper and Joy A. Palmer, 113-130 (London: Routledge) 2004.

Gitanjali, Gogoi. “An Ecocritical Approach to Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God” IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences 19, no. 11(2014):1-4. https://doi.org/10.9790/0837-191150104

Glotfelty, Cheryll and Fromm, Harold eds., The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, (London: The University of Georgia Press) 1996.

Habila, Helon. The Chibok Girls: The Boko Haram Kidnappings and Islamist Militancy in Nigeria, New York: Colombia Global Report, 2016.

Heise, Ursula K “Forum on Literatures of The Environment”, PMLA 114, no. 5,(1999):1089-1104.

Larson, Charles. R. “Review: Helon Habila’s The Chibok Girls: The Boko Haram Kidnappings and Islamist Militancy in Nigeria,” CounterPunch.org, Dec. 9, 2016, www.counterpunch.org.

Last, Murray. “The Pattern of Dissent: Boko Haram in Nigeria” 2009. Accessed 4 May 2017 http://www.humanities. uctac.za/usr/cci/news/Murray_Last.pdf

Lemmer, Erika. “Ecocriticism”, JLS/TSW 23, no. 3(2007):223-227.

Manes, Christopher. “Nature and Silence,” in Literary Ecology, edited by Glotfelty and Fromm (Athens, Georgia and London: The University of Georgia Press) 1996.

Marshall, Ian. “The Ecocritical Heritage” In Defining Ecocritical Theory and Practice, (Salt Lake City: Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment)1994

Maiangwa, Benjamin and Amao, Olumuyiwa Babatunde. “Daughters, Brides, and Supporters of the Jihad”; Revisiting the Gender-Based Atrocities of Boko Haram in Nigeria”, African Renaissance 12, no. 2(2015):117-144.

Mishra, Sandip Kumar. “The Marginalised Vs. The Civilised: An Ecocritical Approach to Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay’s Aranyak, The Creative Launcher 1, no. 6(2017):142-156.

Morton, Timothy. The Ecological Thought, Cambridge: Harvard UP Print, 2007.

Ngwodo, Chris. Understanding Boko Haram: A Theology of Chaos. Revolution By Other Means (2010). Accessed April 9, 2020 https://chrisngwodo.blogspot.com/2010/10/understanding-boko-haram-theology-of.html

Olanrewanju, John Shola. “Globalisation of Terrorism: A Case Study of Boko Haram in Nigeria, International Journal of Politics and Good Governance 6, no. 6(2015):1-22.

Okoye-Ugwu S. “Going Green: An Ecocritical Reading of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, Okike (Chinua Achebe Memorial Edition) 2017:154- 165.

Sahu, Geeta. “Ecocrticism: Understanding the Relationship Between Literature And Environment in Indian English Novels”, Sai Om Journal of Arts and Education 1, no. 1(2014): 23-26.

Soper, Kate. What is nature? London: Blackwell, 1995.

William, Rueckert. “Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism,” in The Ecocriticism Reader: Landmarks in Literary Ecology, edited by Glotfelty and Fromm, 105-123 (London: The University of Georgia Press) 1996

Worcester, Maxim. “Combating Terrorism in Africa” ISPSW: Berlin, Accessed April 20 ,2020 https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/50103/Combating_Terrorism_Africa.pdf

Wordsworth, William. Wordsworth: The Prelude or Growth of A Poet’s Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970.

CONFIDENCE G. SANKA is aLecturer at the Department of English Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana Email: fikoff75@gmail.com

CHARITY AZUMI ISSAKA is a tutor at the Department of English, KNUST Senior High, Ghana

PATRICIA G. ASAMOAH is a lecturer at the Department of English Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana.

Sanka, Confidence G., Issaka, Charity A. and Gustafson-Asamoah, Patricia. “The Boko Haram Kidnappings and Islamist Militancy in Nigeria: An Ecocritical Analysis of Habila’s The Chibok Girls.” E-Journal of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences 1, no.1 (2020): 11-20.https://doi.org/10.38159/ehass.2020052

© 2020 The Author(s). Published and Maintained by Noyam Publishers. This is an open access article under the CCBY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Articles in this Issue

About Journal