The Sustainability Reporter : Sustainability and Unsustainability in Helon Habila's Oil on Water

Abstract: Helon Habila left Nigeria for the first time to receive the Caine prize in England in 2001 (​The Guardian​) and was at the time still working as a journalist. The narrator of his Novel ​Oil on Water (2011)​ is also a journalist. Rufus is a journalist seeking the truth. The purpose of this essay is to show how unsustainability manifests itself in Helon Habila's ​Oil on Water. Unsustainability is either economic, a form of neocolonialism, or ecological in Habila's novel. I use economic, neocolonialist and ecocritical references and theories to illustrate my interpretation of ​Oil on Water​ and to show that Habila denounces all the previously mentioned forms of unsustainability. In pursuing this aim I finally evoke potential ideas that could lead to the path of a more sustainable future for the Niger Delta.