My thesis topic: Post colonial melancholia and oil politics in Helon Habila’s OIL ON WATER.

Theme: OIL ON WATER is dominantly analeptic that represents the misuse of natural resources by a
post independent government and this leads to violence as the natives form militia group to protect the
natural environment.

Post colonialism is a period which which deals with the political or cultural condition of a former
colony. It focuses on the impact of human control and exploitation of colonized people and their lands.
In other words, it is the state of affairs representing the aftermath of western colonialism ; the term can
also be used to describe the concurrent project to reclaim and rethink the history and agency of people
subordinated under various forms of imperialism . Post colonialism should not be confused with the
claim that the world we live in is now devoid of colonialism. Post colonial theorists have taken upon
themselves to investigate the various trajectaries(courses, routes) of modernity from the perspectives of
philosophical , cultural and historical perspectives.
Post colonialism is also closely associated with a more specific set of questions, and although it
should not be reduced to these questions, they have proved to be enormously influential . One of such
questions has been the relationship between imperialism and identity. We can safely say that post
colonialism is centered around experiences such as slavery , migration, suppression and resistance ,
difference , race, gender, and place as well as responses to the dickscourses of imperial Europe. The
views of some writers on post colonialism will be discussed in subsequent chapters.
Frantz Fanon, a psychiatrist and philosopher analysed and medically described the nature of
colonialism as essentially destructive. He goes further to say it’s societal effects ~the imposition of a
subjugating colonial identity , is harmful to the mental health of the native peoples who were
subjugated into colonies. He says the ideal reason for colonialism is to deny the colonized all
opportunities of experiencing the goodness of humanity. The colonialists achieved this dehumanization
by physical and mental violence on the natives . Fanon actively supported and participated in the
Algerian Revolution( 1954_62) for independence from France as a member and representative of the
FONT DE LIBERATION. According to him, the natives must violently resist colonial subjugation. He
experienced this war first hand . In his booksTHE WRETCHED IF THE EARTH and ( 1961) and BLACKSKIN
WHITE MASK( 1952), he presented an analysis of the relationship between the colonized and the
colonizers. From his WRETCHED IF THE EARTH, many themes of colonialism were brought out . Among
the consequences of colonialism and their effects as investigated by Fanon and other theorists are:?both
the colonized and the colonizers are implicated in the horrors of imperialism , and both will have to be
decolonized; the colonized have to find a way of overcoming the competition of foreign rule but only
over their territory but also over their kinds and bodies; seeking recognition from an oppressor in terms
that the oppressor has hardly provides a genuine liberation from the grip of colonialism; the colonizers
have to make sense of how the brutality of colonialism relates to their own apparent humanism.
Edward Said is believed to be the father of post colonial theories. He believed that the consequences
of colonialism are still persisting in the form of chaos , coups, corruption, civil wars and bloodshed,
which permeates many ex colonies . He based his theory of post colonialism on what he considers the
false image of the orient or the East that has been fabricated by western explorers , poets, novelists ,
philosophers , political theorists, economists and imperial administrators since Napoleon’s occupation in
Egypt in 1798. According to Said, these westerners have always nportrayed the image of the orient as « 
primitive, uncivilized so as to create it as the contrast to the advanced and Civilized west. According to
him, the consequences of colonialism are still ongoing in the form of chaos, coups, corruption , civil wars
and bloodshed. To him, a powerful colonizer has imposed a langage and a culture , whereas cultures ,
histories, values and languages of the oriental people have been ignored and even distorted by the
colonialists in their pursuit to dominate these peoples and exploit their wealth in the name of
enlightening, civilizing and even humanizing them.
In THINGS FALL APART, Chinua Achebe tries to encourage his fellow country men to take advantage
of the educational system that the missionaries introduced to them so as to better their lives. He brings
out the idea of the «  collapse, breaking into pieces, chaos and confusion »(Alimi 121) of traditional Igbo
culture that suffers at the hands of the white man as they arrived Umuofia along with their religion. An
example of the collapse of the Igbo culture due to colonialism was the fact that the men were not
allowed to marry many wives as before, with the introduction of religion by the foreign missionaries.

Melancholia was described as a distinct disease with particular mental and physical symptoms in the
5th and 4th centuries BC. Hippocrates , in his Aphorisms, characterized all “ fears and despondencies , if
they last long time” as being symptomatic of melancholia. In English literature, melancholy is a situation
where someone experiences sadness, depression of mind or spirit. Few symptoms of melancholia /
melancholy are : depression of spirit( dejection), a pensive mood, despondency, miserableness, gloom,
sadness etc.
Between the late 15th and 19th centuries, melancholia was a common medical diagnosis and
modern concepts of depression arose from this historical context. In 1996, Gordon Parker and Disan
Hadzi – Parlovic described melancholia as “ a specific disorder of movement and mood” . They attached
the term to the concept of “ endogenous depression” claimed to be caused by internal forces rather
than environmental influences.
In 2006, Michael Alan Taylor and Max Fink also defined melancholia as a systemic disorder that could
be identified by depressive mood rating scales , verified by the presence of abnormal cortisol
metabolism. They considered it to be characterized by depressed mood, abnormal motor functions and
abnormal vegetative signs, and they described several forms , including retarded depression, psychotic
depression and post parfum depression.
In the 10th century, Persian physician Al-Akhawayni Bokhari , described melancholia as a chronic
illness caused by the impact of black bile on the brain. He describes melancholia’s initial clinical
manifestations as “ suffering from an unexplained fear, inability to answer questions or providing fals
answers, self-laughing and self crying and speaking meaninglessly yet with no fever”.
Burton, through his THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY , engaged more of his writing in the
investigation and assessment of the ever- increasing mass of the medical works that established the
disease as one of the most serious forms of mental affliction of the era.
Sigmund Freud’s twin papers, “ On Narscissism :’ An Introduction’ ( 1914) and ‘ Mourning and
Melancholia(1917) , take as their formative concern the difficulty of setting apart the ‘inner’ and the
‘outer’ worlds and of preserving a stable image of a boundaries self.
Narcissism and Melancholia are terms, Mayer psychologically understood, address the difficulty of
drawing lines between the self and the world.: the narcissist who declares “ I am the world, and the
world is me” obliterates the very distinction ; the melancholic, famously in Freud’s formulation,
expresses a worldly impoverishment as a self destitution, object-loss is transformed into ego- loss: in
mourning , it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia it is the ego
itself( M$M,246).
While Freud was concerned about describing the structure of ego- formation, many subsequent
commentators have preferred to emphasize the cultural and normative dimensions of the terms.
 Melancholia comes equipped with its own opposite , healthy mourning: it has also , on occasions,
been placed as narcissism’s necessary others where narcissism connotes the fantasy of fullness and self
– sufficiency , and melancholia records the constitutive lack at the heart of all subjectivity.
In Freud’s view, and in that of Klein, who intended and deepened it , melancholia is a narcissistic
illness or disorder of the personality. Mourning and melancholia ( Freud 1917) is the work in which
Freud first fully recognized the importance of the self’s relations to its lived objects, as he explored the
different developments that could take place when the loss of an object had to be suffered.some writers
have written works works expressing their views on Helon Habila’s Oil on water.
In Telling the Niger Delta Story: A review of Helon Habila’s Oil on water by Onome Onwah, March
15,2021, we will see how the writer analyses the political state of the Niger Delta . According to her, oil
on water paints a vivid picture of what realist literature means. As at the time of writing Nigeria was
going through very serious security issues, and is still going through now even after this book was
written ten years ago. The book is about two journalists, Zaq and Rufus who go into the creeks in Port
Harcourt in Nigeria in search of the wife of a foreign oil worker who was kidnapped. As we read the
story, we see the amount of poverty and calamity that plaques the people of the Niger Delta. They go
through horrible conditions in the hands of the authorities. The author describes the decaying
environment that is polluted with gaz due to the oil exploration in the region.
«  The land was so polluted that even the water in the wells turned red…the land needed cleansed of
blood and pollution »( p121).
The people believed that with the discovery of oil refineries in their region , their lives would be
better . All they craved for was a better / improved standard of living. Little did they know this was going
to be a nightmare for them. Due to this, some people became greedy and violence became the order of
the day. There was the rise of different militant groups , soldiers abusing their powers and causing fear
in the hearts of the villagers. Many people had to escape their homes and ran to the cities to seek
refuge. Zaq, one of the journalists who go in search of Isabel also wants to speak to the people
concerned in this story. Though he has a drinking problem, we see his determination in accomplishing
his mission. He is just a broken man. Rufus, though a young journalist, displayed maturity in handling
Zaq. He also knows how to deal with the militants , his superiors at the office and the soldiers alike.
However, the people used religion to ease their pain and stress from the situation. The author
portrays the shrine as a character on its own. A place of renewal, rebirth, hope. Even though there was
an attempt to destroy the shrine, the people did all they could to rebuild it. The people found hope,
solace, and peace in the shrine. Boma, Rufus’ sister, found peace in the shrine too after all the struggles
in her life. She believed that the shrine held the keys to her peace of mind.
The book is full of adventures. When you start reading it, the series of events will do engage you
and you will see the need to continue reading. The story will make you see the need for a quick
reformation/ intervention in the Niger Delta. There is the need for security in the environmental
preservation in the area.
Many writers from Nigeria believe that «  the disruption of the landscape is tied to poilitical
corruption »( Slaymaker 131). For a poet like Nnimmo Bassey , these conflicts are as a result of the class
differences between the farmers and the fishermen on one hand, and the oil companies who act with
the complicity of the military junta( in the days of General Sani Abacha ) and the more recent civilian
governments of Goodluck Jonathan and Muhammadou Buhari , on the other. Bassey ( 2992; qtd . In
Egya 63) writes:
«  we see their shells
Behind military shield
Evil, horrible, gallows called oil rigs
Drilling our souls »
 More so, in his collection The oil lamp :poems(2005), Ogaga Ifowodo (13:emphasis in original )
endows the earth with a voice that cues out for eco justice:
Take your cooking oil away
We are not pots or coulerons!
Can’t you see here’s no kitchen
And you burn your meal to ashes?
These poems give an incite on the destructions done to Mother Earth in the name of modernity. He
calls the situation « eco crusade ».

Ngusse Michael and Abiye Daniel, in their work Ecofeminist issues in Helon Habila’s novel Oil on
water, also express their view on oil exploration and misuse of natural resources in the text.
Ecofeminist literary criticism was used to analyse the novel. It mirrors the destruction of the natural
environment of the Niger Delta. Due to this, the ecosystem faces a series of challenges . There is no
peace across the environs of the Niger Delta including water because of oil spillage, air congestion,
pollution due to poisonous gases . There is little or no fresh air and finally there is no peace due to the
ongoing war. As a result, the inhabitants have no choice but to live in such an environment.
Furthermore, due to the oil pollution in the environment, so many animals die/ extinct , fish die , the
people have to move from their habitat to somewhere else. Because of the above circumstances, many
writers and non writer agree that corruption, gender injustice, civil war, religious fanatisme, draught,
famine, globalization, migration, mal administration, environmental crisis are the major themes of
contemporary African literature. As Irele( 2009) describes the various issues raised by African writers are
the following;, themes such as colonialism, the analysis and critique of missionary activity , the civilizing
mission and negritude, the challenge to Islam , anti apartheid activism and the questioning of occidental
superiority have now been partially displayed by concern for the environment, immigration,
democratization , civil conflict, genocide, the national conferences, child soldiers, the disintegration of
the nation-state, AIDS, the truth and Reconciliation Commision, and globalization – socio political factors
reconfigured in the imaginative landscapes of writers whose works exhibit a Fri found engagement with
the most demanding ethical issues of our time( p.230).