NIGERIA: DELTA OIL EXPLORATION POLITICS AND THE PORTRAYAL OF BRUTAL IMPACT IN YERIMA’S HARD GROUND

This study presents an interdisciplinary approach towards a critical analysis of some impacts of crude-oil exploration in Niger Delta and polemics of viable conϐlict resolution framework. This approach involves analysis of Ahmed Yerima’s creative portrayal in Hard Ground which revolves around the variables activating conϐlicting emotional interests in matters concerning ‘black gold’ in Nigeria, and how these variables resonant in debates and demands for Nigeria’s polity restructuring because of perceived resource mismanagement. More so, our scope includes an analytical attempt at illuminating elaborately our interpretation of the dimensions to the loud and shrewd inclinations subsuming what some see as solution to the lingering conϐlict, and the suppositions explaining why others see the debates and demands on polity restructuring as dark convoluted ploys aimed at hidden agenda. Hence, through select theories of victimhood, this study attempts to elucidate on the variables propelling conϐlicting emotional interestsabout oil exploration in Niger Delta, by looking interpretively hard and deep on the perspectives, views and suppositions deϐining the ideologies and inclinations propelling them. In the end, this study notes that the disenchantments and troubles with Nigeria’s polity framework and structure as it relates to oil exploration in Niger Delta are subsumed in Hard Ground’s creativecontribution as a means of assessing the points to the fault-lines that characterize the subsisting socio-political structure upon which Nigeria stands and wobbles.