This study interrogates the ecological crisis in Nigeria’s Niger Delta through an interdisciplinary synthesis of postcolonial ecocriticism and environmental security discourse, foregrounding the intricate nexus between environmental sustainability and national security. Drawing on a qualitative methodology grounded in close textual analysis, the paper examines selected poems from Nnimmo Bassey’s We Thought It Was Oil, but It Was Blood and I Will Not Dance to Your Beat. It argues that Bassey’s eco-poetry transcends conventional environmental protest to function as a critical discourse that reconfigures ecological degradation as a form of structural and securitised violence. Central to this analysis is the symbolic triad of earth, oil, and blood, which encodes the entanglement of ecological devastation, economic exploitation, and human insecurity within the Niger Delta. The study further demonstrates how Bassey’s poetic imagination exposes the paradox of petro-capitalism, wherein resource abundance engenders poverty, militarisation, and socio-political instability. In sum, the paper contends that eco-poetry constitutes an epistemic and political intervention that advocates sustainable resource governance, ecological restoration, and the realisation of the Sustainable Development Goals as prerequisites for peace and stability, in Nigeria.
Keywords: Environmental Justice, Environmental sustainability, National Security, Niger Delta eco-poetry, environmental security discourse, postcolonial ecocriticism
