Oil Wealth, Corruption, and the Multiple F(Ph)aces of Internal Colonialism in Ahmed Yerima’s Hard Ground

Nurudeen Adeshina Lawal

doi:10.29162/anafora.v7i1.8

Abstract

This paper explores Ahmed Yerima’s play Hard Ground (2011) to show how Yerima employs dramatic elements to interrogate manifestations of corruption and internal colonialism engendered by violent struggles for oil wealth in the Niger Delta region. Some scholars from the Niger Delta region have alleged that Yerima’s Hard Ground falls short of being a “realistic” portrayal of the oil crisis in the Niger Delta. Their claim suggests that the play is an exercise in the service of the establishment. However, this study contends that Yerima’s representations of corruption and internal colonialism in the crisis are meant neither to underestimate the role of the establishment nor to overlook the suffering of the people in the region. The playwright’s portrayals of corruption and various forms of internal colonialism generating the oil crisis are informed by postcolonial, multiple, contradictory, and complementary realities/truths, which often reveal the complexities of socio-economic and political crises in the postcolonial African state. The study reveals that leadership egoism and failure are among the key factors that aggravate violent crises which recur in the region. In its conclusion, the paper asserts that the multiple insights that Yerima’s Hard Ground offers on the oil crisis call for collective efforts within the Niger Delta region in particular and Nigeria as whole at finding lasting solutions to the region’s crises orchestrated by the violent struggle for oil wealth.

Highlights

The Niger Delta region is considered the largest wetland in Africa and the third largest in the world
Anifowose notes that the Niger Delta is synonymous with the old Eastern region of Nigeria (284) and explains that, in Nigeria’s present-day political geography, the Niger Delta refers to the oil-bearing states of Southern Nigeria: Abia, Bayelsa, Cross River, Akwa Ibom, Delta, Edo, Imo, Rivers, and Ondo (284)
Postcolonialism is employed to interpret how Yerima’s Hard Ground portrays corruption and internal colonialism that characterize the struggle for oil wealth in the Niger Delta region

Summary

Introduction

The Niger Delta region is considered the largest wetland in Africa and the third largest in the world. In an effort to confront the Nigerian state, its agents, and multi-national oil companies that are considered as major collaborators in the perceived exploitation and marginalisation of the Niger Delta peoples, there appears to have emerged a new “distinctive regional consciousness” in the region. J.P Clark-Bekederimo’s The Wives’ Revolt (1991) and All for Oil (2000), Ola Rotimi’s Akasa You Mi (2001), Ben Binebai’s Drums of the Delta (2010), Esiaba Irobi’s Hangmen Die (2011), and Ahmed Yerima’s Ipomu (2011) and Little Drops (2011), among other plays, have addressed, in different ways, the oil conflicts in the region These dramatic texts and others like them deserve more scholarly attention than they are being given at the moment because they offer fertile soil for the inquiry into numerous factors that generate the recurring crises in the Niger Delta region in particular and Nigeria at large. The playwright’s interrogation of the issues of corruption and internal colonialism in the region is informed by postcolonial, multiple, contradictory, and complementary realities/truths which often capture the complex nature of socio-economic and political conflicts in postcolonial Africa

Theoretical Framework

Conclusion

Works Cited

Nurudeen Adeshina LAWAL Osun State University