JOURNALISTIC FORM AND ECO-CRITICAL NARRATIVE IN HELON HABILA’S Oil on Water

Abstract

One of the defining crises of the twenty-first century is environmental degradation, a condition that has intensified the growth of eco-literature and eco-criticism. Helon Habila’s Oil on Water emerges as a pivotal text that interrogates the ecological and socio-political consequences of crude oil exploitation in the Niger Delta. While existing scholarship has largely centred on the novel’s representation of eco-conflict, this study focuses a less examined dimension: the deployment of journalistic form as a structuring principle of the narrative. Through an eco-critical and narratological framework, the study examines how the novel adopts investigative techniques, testimonial modes, and reportage aesthetics to construct its account of environmental crisis. It argues that the fusion of fiction and journalistic inquiry not only intensifies the representation of ecological devastation and human displacement but also reconfigures narrative authority, linking environmental realities with mediated testimony. In doing so, the novel demonstrates how journalistic form enhances the ethical and political force of eco-critical narrative. Eco-Critical Narrative, Journalistic Form, Petrofiction, Environmental Justice