UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA ENUGU CAMPUS

FACULTY OF LAW

AN ASSIGNMENT SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT FOR THE COURSE ENGL 105: INTRODUCTION TO
NIGERIAN LITERATURE

BY

AMEH CHRISTABEL CHIEMENA

LECTURER

DR N. O. AKAJI

AUGUST,2025
Highlight the various aspects of ecological concern in "Yellow yellow" by Kaine Agary and critically
analyse how they are represented in the novel.
Yellow Yellow tells the story of a teenage girl, Zilayefa, who in her bid to find herself escapes
from her rural community to the city of Port Harcourt in her bid to find herself escapes from her
rural community to the city of Port Harcourt in her quest for a better and more fulfilling life. In
telling her story, the narrator reveals the devastating ecological challenges that threaten to
extinct her rural community. Kaine Agary's "Yellow Yellow" highlights several ecological concerns in
the Niger Delta region, particularly focusing on the impact of oil exploration and exploitation on the
environment and its inhabitants. The novel explores themes of environmental degradation, pollution,
and the effects on women and the community.A society that is structured along rural and urban,
ethnic, racial, economic lines, exploiters and exploited and rulers/kings and subjects which are all
aimed at social relation anchored on exploitation. The social relation that exists in Agary’s society
is one of exploitation and these social relations are what we shall explore critically and also try to
argue that these exploitative relations among humans are at the base of non-human
exploitation and by extension responsible for ecological problems. The ecological concerns are
deeply woven into the narrative, highlighting the environmental degradation in the Niger Delta region of
Nigeria. The novel critiques how oil exploitation affects both nature and people, especially the
marginalized.

-Oil Pollution and destruction of natural habitat

The novel portrays pollution as a daily reality in the Niger Delta.Rivers and farmlands, which are central
to the people's livelihood, are contaminated.The once-thriving ecosystem becomes a symbol of loss and
destruction, affecting fishing, farming, and the health of communities. People like Zilayefa's mother who
survive on fishing are hardly able to sustain their elves as fishes which were numerous before are now
very few and hard to catch and the government don't seen to care about it. The water which they use to
bath,cook and do their daily activities is of mixed colours due to the presence of chemicals in it.Agary
uses environmental decay as both a metaphor for moral and societal decay. The land's suffering parallels
the exploitation of women and the loss of innocence, especially seen in Zilayefa's coming-of-age
journey.Zilayefa, Sisi, and other mixed race children especially girls living in Warri and Port-Harcourt
represent morally bankrupt life in Port-Harcourt. Exploitation and Government Neglect

Multinational oil companies are portrayed as exploitative, caring little for the ecological
consequences.The government is shown as complicit, prioritizing profit over the well-being of its citizens
and land.Agary critiques neocolonialism, where foreign corporations, with local support, plunder
resources while communities live in poverty. It reflects environmental injustice, where those who suffer
the most are least responsible for the damage.The coporations operate with little accountability, causing
irreparable damage to the environment. However, this exploitation is made possible by a corrupt and
complicit government that fails to protect its citizens.The government is depicted as passive or entirely
absent, offering no support to the suffering communities. There’s a strong sense that those in power
have traded the welfare of the people for wealth and foreign investment.This combination of corporate
exploitation and government failure is Agary’s critique of neocolonialism and environmental injustice.
The people of the Niger Delta bear the brunt of environmental destruction while receiving none of the
benefits. Agary suggests that ecological damage is not just a natural disaster — it is a result of deliberate
political and economic choices. The land and people are both exploited by systems of power, echoing
themes of inequality.

- Urban Migration

The destruction of rural livelihoods due to pollution forces people, like Zilayefa, to migrate to urban
areas.This movement creates identity crises, exposes them to exploitation, and fractures traditional
values.The novel links ecological loss with cultural and personal dislocation. Zilayefa’s experience in Port
Harcourt mirrors the loss of roots and belonging caused by environmental collapse.er bid to find
herself escapes from her rural community to the city of Port Harcourt in her quest for a better and
more fulfilling life. Zilayefa goes to Port-Harcourt with the help of pastor Ikechukwu who gives her a
letter to mama George otherwise called Bisi. We are told that Bisi is a high society woman who is equally
a contractor with government and oil companies. She also runs a boutique and owns a lot of property.
She lives in GRA in Port-Harcourt and is a social woman.Lolo is also a high social woman who organizes
parties for different class of people in the society. In Port-Harcourt, Zilayefa is still very optimistic of
furthering her education and crowning it with a university degree. However, in the interim, she works in
a royal hotel as a receptionist. Later, Zilayafa falls in love with Admiral because she gets to feel a way
she has not experienced from her father. So, she sees every man as her father figure hence she easily
get attracted.

Feminist-Ecological Perspective

The exploitation of the land is paralleled with the exploitation of women.Female bodies and the
environment are both sites of control, use, and through this lens, Agary aligns with eco-feminist thought
suggesting that the degradation of nature and subjugation of women are connected.This is clearly
shown in how the village girls are wowed by the city girls who occasionally visit with lots of luxury items
and stories of white men. Some of which potrsy how they are used as play things by them in exchange
for money. Also in Zilayefa's village the women are seen as lower beings who work and sacrifice for their
husbands and family. Bibi, Zilayefa’s mother, represents the rural Niger-Delta women that have been
ecologically and sexually abused and called demoralizing names, such as “Mammywater”, “pussycat”,
borntroways’, “African profits”, “ashawo pinks”, They are exploited by foreign businessmen and oil
company owners. They are abandoned after being exploited environmentally and sexually.These things
make people, like Zilayefa, Sisi, and other mixed race girls to suffer from both social and psychological
phobia. Hence, many of them lament not knowing their fathers.

-Violence and corruption

Another major avert effect of oil exploration and exploitation in Niger-Delta is youth restiveness,
violence, and pipeline vandalization.Some are jailed, some disappeared mysteriously, and others are
killed. Many boys who are unable to complete their school education join the growing army fighting for
justice in the Niger-Delta,They claim to be fighting for the progress and recognition of the Ijaw people of
the NigerDelta. However, they steal,blackmail and vandalize oil pipe lines.The capitalists that operate
the oil companies use Nigerian armed forces to terrorize and brutalize them,while some are invited to
meetings where they are poisoned.Another evil is corruption ,it is unbelievable that a country that
exports crude oil has four refineries and exporting petrol yet her citizens are suffering as a result of
shortage of petrol. The people of Niger-Delta are expected to experience better life. However, the
Minister of Petroleum that is from the region is after his personal comfort to the detriment of his
people. Hence, feeding fat at the same table as the devils of government and oil companies and
forgetting the starvation of his own home. The policemen in the cause of carrying out their official duty
intimidate the people in order to extort money from them. This is demonstrated in the novel with the
encounter of Damiete and a police officer. The police officer, after checking his papers still requested
money“‘Bros, your brodas dey hungry here o!’ he said with a smile. The same officer had lost his severe
tone”.The police are so corrupt, that if you have enough money, you can pay your way out of any
trouble. The Ijaw and tsekr ethnic groups from both sides lose their lives over claims of land
ownership.The government deploys military personnel to the region in order to curtail the region's
restiveness and also increase production for the oil companies. Outside their duty, the military men
become objects of oppresson in the hands of the oil workers against those who dare to question the
deplorabe state of things.These are brought before Admiral in the meeting between him and the youths
in his house.ad hurt and Agary critiques neocolonialism, where foreign corporations, with local support,
plunder resources while communities live in poverty. The effects of crude oil spillage are indeed
enormous, ranging from the destruction of farmlands, pollution of the environment, and the economic
and health hazards human beings suffer. The excerpts above lend credence to Adati Ayuba Kadafa’s
incisive revelation that “when oil spills occur, the oil spreads over a wide area, affecting terrestrial and
marine resources” and, in most severe cases, leading to the “...complete relocation of some
communities...

” Pollution of fresh water, loss of forest and agricultural land, destruction of fishing grounds, and
reduction of fish population… ” (26).

Just as Zilayefa informs the readers

, “…so it was that, in a single day, my mother lost her main source of sustenance…. She and others in the
village lost the creatures of the river to oil spills, acid rain, gas flares…” (Yellow—Yellow, 4),

The e oil spillage in her village causes the ruination of plants and extermination of animal and aquatic
life, thus bringing hardship, suffering, hunger, unemployment, and poverty. It is worth mentioning that
by placing this vivid scene of environmental degradation due to oil exploitation at the fore of the
narrative, Agary highlights crude oil exploitation as the cause of the multifaceted crisis that plagues the
Niger Delta region. These crises constitute the chapters that follow. As a people whose major sources of
sustenance are farming and fishing, two vocations that greatly rely on natural resources found in the
environment, the despoliation of that environment means that their sources of survival have been taken
away from them. This explains the helplessness, lack, and poverty that set in among the people.Ideally,
the oil spillage that drowns Binaebi’s farm is responsible for the turning point in the life of Zilayefa and
her family. As a single parent, Binaebi—Zilayefa’s mother—relies on the proceeds from her farm for
their daily survival and education of her only child. However, Zilayefa, the narrator, explains:

The day many mother’s farmland was overrun by crude oil was the day her dream for we started to
wither, . . .. the black oil that spilled that day swallowed my mother’s crops and unraveled the threads
that held together her fantasies for me. She was able to find new farmland in anothervillage, but it was
not the same (Yellow – Yellow, 10).

This abortion of Binaebi’s dream of a better life for her daughter is not peculiar to her alone but

also applies to every other person whose main source and hope of sustenance was destroyed by the oil
spillage. It rendered them hopeless and helpless because their transitional economic support system of
farming and fishing could not support and sustain them any longer: “Farming and fishing, the
occupations that had sustained my mother, her mother, and her mother’s mother, no longer provided
gain” (Yellow—Yellow, 39).

Essentially, oil exploitation in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria has degraded the water bodies because,
as the oil spillage overruns farmlands, it cannot be supposed that the streams, shallow wells, and ponds
—sources of domestic and drinking water for the host communities—are not affected. Unarguably, oil
spillage overruns farmlands; unarguably, oil spillage is one of the major sources of water pollution in the
Niger Delta. Zilayefa captures the menace of water pollution by oil spillage thus:

The water that flowed with streaks of blue, purple, and red, as drops of oil escaped from the pipelines
that moves the wealth from beneath my land and into the pockets of the select few who ruled Nigeria
was the same water I drank (Yellow – Yellow, 39)

Zilayefa’s revelation in this excerpt exposes the despoliation of the environment, the pollution of their
source of drinking water, and, most importantly, their deplorable condition in which lack of pipe-borne
water forces the people to drink the water polluted by oil spillage. This injection of polluted water, of
course, poses serious health implications because it could lead to thoutbreak of diseases such as
cholera, typhoid, dysentery, and other waterborne diseases. Conversely, Agary also began her
searchlight on the pre-oil days when the land yielded in multiple folds and the water bodies were full of
fish, when farming and fishing sustained the people; the good old days, before crude oil exploitation,
before oil spillage destroyed everything. My mother told me of the days of her youth when every
husband was expected to give his new wife a dugout canoe . .. the wife would use this canoe to fish,
earn a living and helped to feed the family . . .. those were the days when . . .. the rivers were teeming
with fish. Their farms held plantain trees so fertile that there was more plantain than anyone knew what
to do with . . .. Those were the days (Yellow – Yellow 39 – 40).

This excerpt reveals an obviously sharp contrast between the days before and after oil was discovered in
large and commercial quantity. Indeed, the days before oil happened were characterized by bountiful
harvest of both fish and sea products whereas the days following oil exploitation are synonymous with
environmental degradation and despoliation. It is therefore, obvious that the oil exploitation activities of
multinational oil corporation degrade and despoil the Niger Delta environment, chocking the very life
out of it. Regrettably, the biodiversity of the Niger Delta ecosystem has been destroyed, the flora and
fauna depleted, and the entire environment despoiled as a result of crude oil exploitation. Just as
Catherine Acholonu posits, the Niger Delta environment is: Suffocating from humility’s waste, from all
the fumes and chemicals humility has been pumping into her blood (the rivers and oceans), and her
body (the soil). In this and other ways, we have been killing off not only our mother earth but also other
occupants of the planet – our brethren who comprise the vegetation, the mineral and the animal
kingdom.(Motherism, 118)

It is even more regrettable that the Niger Delta region embodies sites of abject poverty,suffering, and
deprivation while the oil wealth from the region enriches others, leaving the people with an
unconducive environment that has been despoiled and degraded as a result of oil exploitation. It is
therefore on this note that crude oil resource exploitation in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria becomes a
metaphor for the environmental despoliation and degradation of the region. Crude oil exploration and
exploitation with the attendant consequences such as oil spillage, destruction of the rich ecosystem of
the Niger Delta region, impoverishment of the people and other forms of environmental degradation
have made the region to become very topical in national and international discourses. As is typical with
all situations of conflict and violence, a large body of literature has been created out of the Niger Delta
imbroglio. Nigerian writers such as Gabriel Okara, J.P. Clark – Bekederemo, TanureOjaide, ken Saro-
Wiwa, Tess onwueme, Ahmed Parker Yerima, IbiwariIkiriko, Kaine Agary, etc., have contributed in
creating an enduring conversation, through their creative writings, of the intricate vagaries of life that
now prevails in the Niger Delta region as a result of oil exploitation and its attendant socioeconomic,
human and ecological problems. Ken Saro-Wiwa’s contribution possibly stands out because his vocal
indictment of the Nigerian state in the ruination of the Niger Delta made him the first environmental
martyr in Nigeria. Unarguably, the Niger Delta and by extension, Nigeria:

At this point of devastation, the people expects the Amananaowei to intervene on their behalf as they
seek compensation from the oil company so as to start up their lives again as they are majorly farmers
and fishermen and women. Unfortunately, the Amananaowei did not rise up to the occasion. Perhaps,
he is in the payroll of the oil companies and will not make any move that may jeopardize his
remuneration. Hence, he abandons his subjects at a time of economic crisis and left them all to their
devastating fate. The people are left with no choice but to take their destinies in their own hands, “the
community took the matter up with the oil company that owned the pipes, but they said they suspected
sabotage by the youths and were not going to pay compensation for all destruction that the burst pipes
had caused” (p. 4). The decision of the oil company is a clear indication of their resolve to continue to
subdue the poor farmers because they are very much aware that the people cannot take any legal
action against them because of their economic circumstance and it will cost less to bribe the
Amananaowei and a few chiefs, notwithstanding the massive exploitation and devastation they wrought
on the land and people.

Zilayefa reinstates the suspicion when she notes that,Young boys threatened to rough up the
Amananaowei and his elders because rumours, probably true, had reached their ears that the
Amananaowei and his elders had received monetary compensation, meant for the village, from the oil
company and shared it amongst themselves. (p. 40)The exploitation of teenage girls by foreign workers
in the oil-rich Niger Delta region left the society with a lot of unwanted mixed-race children, especially
girl children, who are perceived as illegitimate and promiscuous, owing to the circumstances of their
birth. Zilayefa is one of such children. She is popularly known and called Yellow Yellow by everyone
including her mother because of her complexion, “the product of a Greek father and an Ijaw mother” (p.
7). So also is Emem’s mother. Like Zilayefa, she “was a product of a hit-and-run with a Portuguese
trader” (p. 73), who must have met her mother at a tender age and exploited her vulnerability. In her
quest for self-discovery, Zilayefa finds out that there are generations of yellows that dates back to 1800s
in the Niger Delta and each of them has a unique story to tell about the circumstance of their birth and
life. She reveals that the first generation yellows are from the Portuguese traders and the British
colonialists which are the origins of old-time yellows such as Sisi. There are also the second generations
of yellows from the Syrians, Lebanese and Greek businessmen and sailors, some of whom were lucky to
know their fathers. The rest yellows were abandoned by their fathers.

According to Zilayefa, “the rest of us were born-troways, rejected by our fathers or, worse, nonexistent
to them. Our crop of yellows was full of variety, coloured by the Filipinos, the Chinese, the British, and
the Americans who worked in the oils sector” (p. 74). In the city of Port Harcourt, Zilayefa discovers that
she and other of her kinds that are of mixed race are regarded with disdain. Also, the nexus between the
woman and her environment is evident in the novel, because the environmental decadence rapidly
leads to the degradation of the female folk who become exposed to various forms of violence and
discrimination in a bid to survive. This lends credence to Shiva and Mies’ notion of prostitution tourism
where the “desire for sex is projected on to an exotic woman, a non-white woman, a woman of the
colonized who due to her poverty has to serve the white man” (Ecofeminism,135). This is glaring in the
novel when the female characters become commodities in the hands of the foreigners in the quest for a
“better life”. Bibi for instance, migrates from her small village to Port Harcourt, “with visions of
prosperity” (7) but instead falls prey to a sex starved sailor who had been at sea for several months and
desperately wanted to satisfy his orgies. He gives Bibi material things including depositing a baby in her
womb (Sexualized Body, Exploited Environment), then he fizzles away into thin air leaving Bibi to cater
for her alone.

The environmental damage is instrumental to the violation of the female in the novel.

Zilayefa immediately loses her moral consciousness as soon as her mother’s farmland is ruined.

She becomes open to all sorts of things (39). She is constantly traumatized by the decadence

in her environment and looks for every avenue of escape. Additionally, Yellow is plagued by…

Maternal wails piercing the foggy days when mothers mourned a child lost to sickness or to the

deceptively calm waters that lay hungry below the stilt latrines, waiting to swallow the children…

(39). The protagonist is also agitated at the harrowing pain associated with having a daily bath

because of the excruciating pain that slashes her private part as a result of the polluted water

that she uses to take her bath. Zilayefa narrates that it was the same water that she excreted

into that she drank. This paints a graphic picture of physical and environmental decadence. The

kind that one cannot escape from because it has become a daily reality. Zilayefa ironically takes a bath
with the oil that has become the source of her moral degeneration. It is on account of this oil that she
has become vulnerable