Ecocriticism and the Politics of Post-Colonial Existence ‘’Taming the wild”: post-colonial governance and the myth of the “untouched” environment

Abstract

This paper investigates the ideological construction of the "untouched" environment in Nigeria, examining how post-colonial governance adopts colonial myths to manage natural landscapes. It argues that the concept of "pristine wilderness" historically used by the British Protectorate to justify the creation of forest reserves persists in modern Nigerian environmental policy. By rebranding indigenous ancestral lands as "empty" or "threatened" wild spaces, the state justifies the displacement of rural communities and the centralization of resource control, a process often disguised as biodiversity conservation or climate mitigation. The study utilizes a qualitative case-study methodology, focusing on the histories of the Yankari Game Reserve and the Cross River National Park. Data are gathered through critical discourse analysis (CDA) of legislative frameworks, such as the Land Use Act of 1978 and National Park Service mandates. Additionally, the paper incorporates ethnographic secondary data to compare state narratives of "environmental protection" against the lived experiences of marginalized local populations whose land-stewardship practices are criminalized. The theoretical framework is situated at the intersection of Post-colonial Ecocriticism and Political Ecology. It employs Edward Said’s concept of "imaginative geographies" to explain how colonial perceptions of the Nigerian landscape were constructed as "wild." This is complemented by the theory of Green Grabbing, which explores the alienation of land for environmental purposes, revealing how post-colonial governance replicates imperial structures of land dispossession. The analysis argues that "taming the wild" in Nigeria is a political strategy that erases indigenous history to facilitate state-led environmental governmentality.