DOI: https://doi.org/10.36347/sjahss.2026.v14i08.003

Pages: 322-328

This paper examines the representation of women and the environment in Agweh's A Pelican of the Wilderness from an ecofeminist perspective. Set against the socio-environmental crisis of Nigeria's Niger Delta, the novel portrays women, children, and the natural environment as victims of oil exploitation, militarisation, militancy, corruption, and patriarchal structures. Through Tonpre's experiences, the narrative exposes polluted rivers, devastated vegetation, gas flaring, declining fishing activities, toxic effluents, and the destruction of wildlife and farmlands. At the same time, women are subjected to domestic violence, rape, poverty, objectification, and gender-based exploitation. Particularly disturbing is the conscription of young girls to serve kidnapped victims in the name of the Niger Delta struggle. This practice strips them of bodily autonomy and reduces them to instruments of a supposedly emancipatory cause. The paper argues that Agweh establishes a symbolic and material relationship between environmental degradation and the oppression of women. The same structures of domination that exploit land, water, and natural resources also marginalise and commodify female bodies. Consequently, A Pelican of the Wilderness interrogates the contradictions of a liberation struggle that reproduces violence against vulnerable people and ecosystems. The study concludes that the novel offers a compelling ecofeminist critique of environmental injustice, patriarchal domination, and resource conflict in the Niger Delta, and the urgent need for socially responsible environmental justice practices.