They too are Casualties: The Toll on the Ecology in Nigerian Civil War Literature

Abstract

Critical scholarship on the literature of the Nigerian Civil War tends to dwell mostly on the human tragedy, often neglecting other nonhuman casualties of war. I identify the use of the environment as a tool of war in the theatre of combat especially during violent confrontations between the fighting troops and will analyse how this is depicted in selected war narratives on the Nigeria–Biafra war. By focusing on the effects of the war on the ecology, my study invites a more holistic examination of the total landscape of war bearing in mind the entanglements and shared vulnerabilities between humans and nonhumans. It also admits to an intersection between war literature and ecocriticism for if there are claims of genocide because of the perceived vulnerability of a group of humans during the war, then there are also evidences of ecocide as a result of the attacks on the defenceless nonhuman entities within the domain of war.

Keywords

• nigerian civil war literature
• ecology
• environmental ethics
• warfare