The need for the scholarship on African literature to be attuned to the issues that affect the environment has become urgent in the event of the massive degradation and destruction of the environment caused by uncontrolled resource extraction in postcolonial Nigeria. This contribution adopts Rob Nixon’s theory of environmentalism of the poor in order to explore how Nigerian poetry represents the interconnectedness of the environment, social justice and human rights is violated in the clash between members of the official landscape with the inhabitants of the vernacular landscape and how these poets have developed an African version of ecocriticism accustomed to specific interests of their society. We engage in a close reading of the texts in order to expose a dual vision of the environment that goes beyond natural physical one and extends to the issue of social injustice.