An Empirical Investigation of How Nigerian Literature Engages with Climate Change as a Literary Theme

Climate change literature is an emerging global genre, but the specific engagement of Nigerian fiction and poetry with environmental themes and ecological crisis has been studied in isolation rather than in comparative relationship to the global climate change literary corpus. This study empirically investigated Nigerian literature's engagement with climate change themes, focusing on texts from 2015 to 2024, and positioned this engagement within the global context of climate fiction. A systematic content analysis methodology was applied to 45 Nigerian literary texts (novels, poetry collections, and short stories) identified through database search, publisher recommendations, and academic bibliography review. Texts were coded for environmental theme type (oil pollution, climate change proper, deforestation, ocean and delta ecology, urban environmental degradation), narrative strategy, political framing, and formal choices. Results showed that oil pollution narratives dominate Nigerian environmental literature at 48.9 percent of coded texts, while climate change narratives proper (global warming, sea level rise, drought) account for only 24.4 percent. Environmental literature is concentrated in the South South zone, with North East drought and North West desertification receiving insufficient literary treatment relative to their severity as actual environmental crises. Formal strategies in Nigerian climate texts are predominantly realist, contrasting with the genre mixing and speculative approaches characteristic of climate fiction in Europe and North America. The study provides the first systematic map of Nigerian climate change literature and identifies significant thematic and formal gaps, recommending the findings for curriculum integration in universities near environmentally stressed communities.