An Original Investigation into Eco-Critical Approaches to Nigerian Literature and the Global Environment Humanities

The environment humanities and ecocriticism have developed robust theoretical frameworks primarily from European and American literary traditions, and their application to Nigerian literature, which engages with some of the world's most severe environmental crises including Niger Delta oil pollution and Sahel desertification, requires both critical adaptation and original theoretical contribution. This study conducted an original investigation into the application and development of ecocritical approaches to Nigerian literature, producing a contextualised Nigerian ecocriticism that makes an original contribution to the global environment humanities. A theory-building methodology was employed, combining systematic review of ecocritical approaches applied to African literature (52 publications from 2015 to 2024), primary corpus analysis of 30 Nigerian literary works with significant environmental themes, and structured consultation with 20 ecocritical scholars, Nigerian environmental activists, and literary critics. The systematic review identified that existing ecocritical frameworks inadequately account for the specific dimensions of Nigerian environmental literature, particularly the intersection of racial capitalism, political governance failure, and environmental catastrophe in Niger Delta literature, the distinct cosmological frameworks through which Nigerian writers conceptualise human-environment relationships, and the environmental epistemology of Northern Nigerian literatures dealing with desertification and climate disruption. The original Nigerian Ecocritical Framework proposes four theoretical constructs: Racial Environmental Capitalism (the intersection of race, extractive industry, and environmental destruction in Niger Delta literary representation), Cosmological Ecology (the embedding of environmental knowledge within traditional spiritual frameworks), Slow Violence Narration (how Nigerian literature represents gradual ecological destruction), and Northern Environmental Memory (how Northern Nigerian communities narrate historical ecological change).