After oil: Analysis of poetic projections into post-petroleum political economy and environment of the Niger delta

Abstract

The paper subjects a forty-three-line poem titled After Oil to critical analysis within
the novel intellectual framework of “poetry and politics.” It focuses on the poem's
projections into the political economy and environment of the Niger Delta at the
inevitable exhaustion of the deposits of fossil fuel that is currently the mainstay of
the Nigerian economy. These projections are, thereafter, subjected to critical
analysis, sometimes with the benefit of hindsight The paper avers that the current
volatility and hostage taking, as epitomized by the activities of the Movement for
the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) and other ethnic vanguard militant
groups in the region, are reflections of what the author saw in his mind's eyes in
2002. The paper concludes that the poem and the author belong in the new
generation of poems and poets (of social commitment) from the Niger Delta as the
poem is inundated with sociopolitical innuendoes.


Sophia: An African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 8(1) 2005: 122-126



Keywords:



Keywords: