Depletion of Nature on the Auspices of Faith: Inter-Religious Crisis in Helon Habila's Measuring Time

The rise of ecocriticism has accorded the study of environmental concerns in literary texts more prominence and this has led to a reading and re-reading of literary texts from an ecocritical perspective. Among the prime issues that led to the emergence of ecocriticism is the exploitation of nature, the degradation of nature and the need for sustenance of nature. Since the inception of the theory, ecocritics have been united in pointing to the teachings of religion (Christianity) as the direct foundation for the exploitation of nature leading toits degradation. This is because man is taught to dominate all the creations of nature, hence he has continued to advance and seek ways to align nature to meet his needs. However, there are more ways that nature and its elements is degraded via the support of religion and not just through a direct exploitation of nature. The activities of man, whether directly or indirectly impinges on nature and it becomes imperative to consider other media by which nature is dwindled. On this note, it must be noted that Christianity is only one of several religions that exist in the society and this entails that there is an interrelation between these religions. Since Christianity is a religion, whose adherents interact with the followers of other religions (in the case of this study, Islam), there should exist another factor for the depletion of nature that this interaction unravels. Therefore, this paper examines the selected novel to discover other ways through which nature is depleted and to discover if the selected novelist can be termed an environmental activist in the light of the popularisation of ecocriticism.