Deforestation, Mining and Criminal Fiefdoms
Ecological destruction is rarely accidental. It is often enabled by policies that privilege short-term economic gains over long-term public welfare; by weak environmental governance, inadequate regulation, and the persis…
Junk Foods and the Politics of Hunger
Food occupies a central place in our culture. It plays a key role in religious/social activities, and is a major marker of the passage of times and seasons. It is a celebration. Food unites people and families and marks …
Ogonize and Yasunize!
As a working definition we see Ogonize and Yasunize to mean “a call for the protection of territories with natural or cultural diversity threatened by serious environmental impacts such as from oil and gas extraction, op…
Rejecting Food Colonialism
According to a popular adage, “when solving a problem, dig at the roots instead of just hacking at the leaves”. The challenge of food insecurity in Nigeria/Africa requires a deliberate pause and critical thinking a…
Needed Socioecological Cohesion
The fabric of the social and environmental conditions of Nigeria are literally stretched to the limit. The threats emanate from local and global strands of the polycrisis wracking the globe. Exploitation, displacements, …
Yasunize and Ogonize the World
On this Earth Day, we call on all people, all movements, and all communities of conscience to rise up and reclaim power from the toxic and exploitative grip of extractive forces that continue to assault peoples, communit…
Books, Imaginations and Ecological Liberation
“…all classical traditions of world literature are fostered by environments where there are intensive struggles against great evils for the restoration of human dignity.” – G. G. Darah, “Revolutionary Pressures in …
Extractivism and Cultural Resistance
The challenges confronting our communities and peoples generally are interconnected. They are often analyzed and presented as though they operate in silos. The reality is that they operate in intricately connected webs a…
Our Right to Safe Food
Nigeria, like many other African nations, stands at a crossroads to her food future. The stark choice is between adopting agricultural biotechnology in line with the industrial agriculture model or agreocology (regenerat…
Extractivism’s Ecological Time Bombs
Extractivism is deeply linked to ecological damage and negation of human rights Ecological damage because it disrupts ecosystems, from the simple case of conversion of land use to the fragmentation of biodiver…
Will COP28 Play With Fire?
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has again issued an Emissions Gap Report that underscores the fact that the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), the linchpin of the Paris agreement is not…
The Artist in the Age of Anthropocene
Archeologists divide Earth’s history in a geologic time scale into a hierarchical series of smaller blocks of time. These divisions are called ages, epochs, periods, eras and eons based on Earth’s rock lay…
Time to Build Solidarity, not Walls
I thank the Chancellor and President, and the entire family of York University for the great honour being extended to me today. Being born at a time we were at the edge of breaking free from colonialism, the notion of i…
Environmental History of Nigeria 101
Introduction The environmental history of Nigeria unfortunately is not a story filled with the rich biodiverse tropical rainforests of the Niger Delta or the cascading rich vegetation of the Sahel savanna but rather one …
Decolonize our Waters
there isn’t much life under water coated by layers of crude oil and contaminated to outlandish levels above safe limits.…
