Entangled with Water
Brown University + University of Strathclyde
Biography
David (he/him) is a second-year PhD student in the history department at Brown University. David’s research interests primarily revolve around the environmental history of Nigeria and West Africa. He is interested in multispecies collaboration and the place of colonialism, science, and aquatic environments in the history of West Africa.
Introduction
In diverging from the historiography on the environmental history of Nigeria, which is dominated by resource extraction histories, during the Earth Scholarship program, David worked on a history of coastal Nigeria that focuses on the source – water rather than resources extracted. Through this reorientation of how one could write an environmental history of Nigeria, David sought to make not just a historiographical intervention but a methodological one as well. This standalone project will inform David’s work as he progresses into the substantive research phase of his doctoral programme at Brown University. During the programme, David was mentored by the historian of colonialism and marine environments, David Wilson, at the University of Strathclyde.
Research
T’o ba fe lo we omi l’o ma’lo
If you wan’ go wash, na water you go use
T’o ba fe se’be omi l’o ma’lo
If you want cook soup, na water you go use
T’o ri ba n’gbona o omi l’ero re
If your head dey hot, na water go cool am
T’omo ba n’dagba omi l’o ma’lo
If your child dey grow, na water he go use
If water kill your child, na water you go use
T’omi ba p’omo e o omi na lo ma’lo
Ko s’ohun to’le se k’o ma lo’mi o
Nothing without water
Ko s’ohun to’le se k’o ma lo’mi o
Omi o l’ota o
Water, him not get enemy!
Omi o l’ota o
Water, him not get enemy!
If you fight am, unless you wan die
Water, him not get enemy!
I say water no get enemy
Water, him not get enemy!
[Note: A part of the Lyrics of Fela’s song—Water no get enemy; “Fela was renowned for speaking against the ruling and past governments of Nigeria, and this side B record provides a slight deviation from those hard-hitting lyrics to a more philosophical message. “Water No Get Enemy Lyrics” contains mixed vocal lingo of Yoruba language and Pidgin English originating in West Africa. It sees Fela emphasize the power of water literally and metaphorically, suggesting its importance to opposing ideologies such as life and death.” Quoted from https://genius.com/Fela-kuti-water-no-get-enemy-lyrics assessed May 25, 2025.]
In 1975, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, the renowned Nigerian musician who defined a new genre—Afrobeat —released his album “Expensive Shit.” Among the now popular songs recorded for the album was “Water No Get Enemy,” which was sung in Yoruba and Nigerian Pidgin English. As with other lyrics from Fela’s songs, there are literal, metaphorical, and subliminal meanings one can easily glean from his songs. In “Water no get enemy,” Fela believes that man cannot conflict with water, given its integral place in every aspect of our lives.
Fela is right to suggest that water is integral to all humans. Our relationship to water and waterscapes is mediated by several factors. Culture, politics, economics, and technology shape and condition the ways through which people relate to water. For this reason, we instinctively recognize its importance. Yet, our relations with water throughout history cannot be solely qualified holistically as peaceful.
Fela’s voice does not represent all Nigerians. However, he speaks of an unconscious imagining of water in Nigeria. The belief that water is integral, fruitful, and a source of cultural and ritual power, albeit without enemies. Ironically, of the various relationships formed over time with water, the attempt to dominate water by abstracting and extracting its value pervades. Water and water bodies recede into the background as passive subjects, static and awaiting our utility. However, the multiple life-worlds of water show that through global histories, human agency has been shared and interdependent, and waterscapes have been an active aspect of these diverse stories.[Note: Here, I follow the burgeoning research on water and waterscapes, new thalassology, marine environmental history, and other subfields or fields of inquiry that place water and water bodies at the center for analysis. See, for example, J. G. Freitas, R. de, James, and I. Land, “Coastal studies and society: The tipping point,” Coastal Studies & Society, 1 1, (2022): 3-9.]
The research questions at the heart of this project stem from the belief that stories about water in coastal Nigeria can be told in multiple ways, broadening our understanding of the country’s history. For instance, why and how did resource and resource management history come to dominate the environmental history of West Africa? What are the multiple forms of environmental violence we can track when we write an environmental history centering on water?
The Earth Scholarship program has helped think through these questions. This showcase will highlight some insights generated during this programme. For this purpose, it is useful to start with the reflections of Michel-Rolph Trouillet (1995) on silences in history. Trouillot (1995) observed that “occurrences equally noted, and supposedly not yet subject to interpretation in the most common sense of the word, exhibit in the historical corpus an unequal frequency of retrieval, unequal (factual) weight, indeed unequal degrees of factualness. Some facts are recalled more often than others; some strings of facts are recalled with more empirical richness than others, even in play-by-play accounts” (P. 59). Here, Trouillet reflects on how the frequency of retrieval of certain historical facts can create silences in the kinds of narratives historians can write or even conceive about the past.
Thinking with these reflections, one sees how, in researching mainly stories about oil, though important. Scholars, through the frequency of retrieval, have managed to valorize the fact of oil above other aspects of coastal Nigeria’s environmental history. This unequal attention has meant that the complex nuances of people’s relationships, knowledge, and utilization of water exist on the sidelines. Instead, the political ecology of oil, its consequential impacts, dominates what we know or come to know about Nigeria’s coastal environment.
Thinking with and about water during this program, my project followed the tradition proposed by Chen, Macleod, and Neimanis (2013) in the edited volume Thinking with Water. For them, thinking with water is an “attempt to enter into a more collaborative relationship with the aqueous, actively questioning habitual instrumentalizations of water… propos[ing] that waters enable lively possibility even as they exceed current understandings” (P. 4). Focusing on the role of water/waterbodies in Nigeria history, presents a different environmental history. This perspective prioritizes the origin of resources over the resources themselves.
Away from oil, it is possible to track changes in meaning-making around water and the epistemic shifts embedded in these processes. By doing this, It became easier to see, for instance, how local epistemologies around water, be it in communities in the rural coast like Ilaje (in Ondo state, Nigeria) or the urban coast in Lagos, are adapting to changing relationship with water to accommodate themselves to the dominate regime of meaning making around water tied to its resources like oil.
Indeed, water permeates the history of coastal Nigeria. Its material entanglements can be seen in the dredged sand at the heart of most of Nigeria’s urban infrastructure. It can be found in the history of pipe-borne water from the subterranean water table, quenching the thirst of many Nigerians since Lagos became a colony. And housing large oil reserves that contribute significantly to the country’s energy consumption. Water conditions and meet the needs of both people and the state, while enduring extractive violence. Relations with water have evolved into nuanced marine-human relationships and knowledge systems that are conscious of water bodies, their interdependent qualities, and their value to the sustenance of coastal communities. Analyzing coastal Nigeria’s environmental history through the lens of water allows us to understand environmental meaning-making, power dynamics, change, and adaptation among historical actors.
References
Chen, C., MacLeod, J., and Neimanis, A. “Introduction: Toward a Hydrological Turn?” In Thinking with Water edited by Chen, C. MacLeod, J. and Neimanis, A. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013.
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power of Production of History. Penguin, 1995.
