Twenty two years ago, precisely on November 10, 1995, Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other leaders of Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP)were executed in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State Capital. The environmental activist and his colleagues were known for their advocacy for social and ecological justice.
Saro-Wiwa was an accomplished novelist who used his works to point out the wrongs in the society. His major concerns were the continued exploitation of the Ogoni people who played host to major oil companies in Nigeria and the resultant effect of their operations, which led to degradation of their land.
He founded MOSOP in 1990 to further his struggle against the exploitation of the natural resources of Ogoniland by Shell Oil Company, a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell. The activities of the oil companies caused environmental degradation, which has remained a major problem till date.
In an interview he granted Channel 4 in the United Kingdom on November 15, 1995, Ken Saro-Wiwa painted a vivid picture of the situation. “The Ogoni country has been completely destroyed by the search for oil….Oil blowouts, spillages, oil slicks, and general pollution accompany the search for oil…Oil companies have flared gas in Nigeria for the past thirty years causing acid rain….What used to be the bread basket of the delta has now become totally infertile. All one sees and feels around is death. Environmental degradation has been a lethal weapon in the war against the indigenous Ogoni people.”
Ken Saro-Wiwa was born in October 1941 and died in November 1995. He was the eldest son of a prominent family in Ogoni, which is today in Rivers State, Nigeria.
He spent his childhood in an Anglican home and eventually proved himself to be an excellent student. He attended Secondary School at Government College, Umuahia, Abia State, and on completion obtained a scholarship to study English at the University of Ibadan and briefly became a teaching assistant at the University of Lagos.
During the Biafran war (1967-1970) he was a civilian administrator for the Port of Bonny, near Ogoni in the Niger Delta. He went on to be a businessman, novelist and television producer. His long-running satirical TV series Basi & Company was believed to be the most watched soap opera in Africa.
Saro-Wiwa was a man of diverse talents. Aside from being a soap opera producer, he was also a great writer. Two of his best known works were drawn from his observations and experiences of the Biafran war. His most famous work is a book titled “Sozaboy.” The author’s use of ‘rotten English’ – a mixture of Nigerian Pidgin English, broken English and idiomatic English – makes this a unique and powerful novel.
He also wrote, “Genocide in Nigeria,” Basi and Company, Just before dawn, A month and a Day: A detention Diary, Singing Anthill and Oral performance in Africa.
During the 1970s, he built up his businesses in real estate and retail and in the 1980s concentrated on his writing, journalism and television production.
Apart from his artistic and business side, what many remember him for was his doggedness in seeing that the people of Ogoni were given a better life. Oil exploration had made life difficult for people in that area. While fishermen could no longer fish due to oil spillage, farmers had their crops destroyed by the very thing that makes Nigeria tick.
While the operatives of Shell and government officials enjoyed the largesse of the natural resource of the land, its people wallowed in abject poverty and were deprived of the little they had as a result of oil. To them oil was a curse rather of a blessing.
Someone had to take up the mantle of leadership in that regard. The lot, of course, fell on the dogged Ken Saro-Wiwa. He was consistently concerned about the treatment of Ogoni within the Nigerian Federation and in 1973 was dismissed from his post as Regional Commissioner for Education in the Rivers State cabinet, for advocating greater Ogoni autonomy.
He began to agitate via his works. Throughout his work he often made references to the exploitation he saw around him as the oil and gas industry took riches from beneath the feet of the poor Ogoni farmers, and in return left them polluted and disenfranchised.
In his book of short stories, Forest of Flowers (1986), the following passages from the story Night Ride, reflects Saro-Wiwa’s anger at seeing multinational oil companies, like Shell, appropriating land from local people: “An old woman had hobbled up to him. My son, they arrived this morning and dug up my entire farm, my only farm. They mowed down the toil of my brows, the pride of the waiting months. They say they will pay me compensation. Can they compensate me for my labours? The joy I receive when I see the vegetables sprouting, God’s revelation to me in my old age? Oh my son, what can I do?
What answer now could he give her? I’ll look into it later, he had replied tamely.
“Look into it later. He could almost hate himself for telling that lie. He cursed the earth for spouting oil, black gold, they called it. And he cursed the gods for not drying the oil wells. What did it matter that millions of barrels of oil were mined and exported daily, so long as this poor woman wept those tears of despair? What could he look into later? Could he make alternate land available? And would the lawmakers revise the laws just to bring a bit more happiness to these unhappy wretches whom the search for oil had reduced to an animal existence?
“They ought to send the oil royalties to the men whose farms and land were despoiled and ruined. But the lawyers were in the pay of the oil companies and the government people in the pay of the lawyers and the companies. So how could he look into it later?”
As a result of what he saw as unreasonable, he began agitating for rights of his people to lead a better life. He focused on his homeland, Ogoni, as a starting point. He launched a non-violent campaign just like the late Reverend Martin Luther King jnr did in the United States.
In this role, he attacked the oil companies and the Nigerian government (verbally) accusing them of waging an ecological war against the Ogoni and precipitating the genocide of the Ogoni people. The campaign was so effective, that by 1993 the oil companies had to pull out of Ogoni. But this created more problems for him.
READ ALSO: Admission: UNILAG denies 24,000, takes only 8000
The peak of his struggle was during the dictatorship of the late General Sani Abacha. Abacha was a ruthless head of state who could not withstand anyone opposing his views. The likes of Noble Laureate, Wole Soyinka and former Lagos State governor, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, left the country as a result of Abacha’s reign of terror.
While he was advocating for the rights of the Ogoni, many were of the view that he would incur the wrath of Abacha and so it was.
Saro-Wiwa was arrested and detained by Nigerian authorities in June 1993. He was released after a month. On May 21, 1994, four Ogoni chiefs were brutally murdered by those who felt they had betrayed them. Saro-Wiwa reportedly had been denied entry to Ogoni land on the day of the incidence, but he was arrested and accused of inciting people against the government.
He denied the charges but was imprisoned for over a year before being found guilty and sentenced to death by a specially convened tribunal. The same happened to other MOSOP leaders (Saturday Dobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel Gbooko, Paul Levera, Felix Nuate, Baribor Bera, Barinem Kiobel, and John Kpuine).
Some of his lawyers resigned in protest against the alleged rigging of the trial by the Abacha regime. Civil society and members of the public felt there was a foul play in the trial of Saro-Wiwa and co. They argued that so many witnesses were procured to testify against him and his group. But their agitations did not help Saro-Wiwa.
The trial was widely criticized by human rights organizations and, half a year later, Ken Saro-Wiwa received the Right Livelihood Award for his courage as well as the Goldman Environmental Prize.
Saro-Wiwa’s death provoked international outrage and the immediate suspension of Nigeria from the Commonwealth of Nations, as well as the calling back of many foreign diplomats for consultation. The United States and other countries considered imposing economic sanctions on Nigeria.
The questions that beg for answers are: Twenty two years after the death of Saro-Wiwa, have the issues that he died for been resolved? What is delaying the Ogoni Clean-up project the Federal Government promised?
Today, some other groups have been formed, notably, the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta (MEND) and Niger Delta Avengers; all of which are still campaigning for better life for the delta region, the same issues that Saro-wiwa raised.
Mrs. Ibim Semenitari, former Ag. Managing Director of Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC), spoke with The Next Edition in a telephone chat.
According to her, most of the challenges that confronted the region while Saro-Wiwa was alive are still remain. “The issues that led to agitations have remained unresolved. There is a lot of suffering in Ogoni land and the Niger Delta region as a whole. The people are impoverished and they are dying,” she said.
Speaking about Saro-Wiwa’s death, the former Commissioner for Information in Rivers state said, “Ogoni lost its brightest minds when Ken Saro-wiwa was killed alongside eight others.”
When asked what efforts are being put in place to see that some of the contentious issues are resolved. She said, “We are dealing with some of the problems. The illegal oil activities are some of the issues. But all hands must be on deck. Stakeholders must be involved in putting an end to the sufferings of the Ogoni people.”
Saro-Wiwa’s execution inspired local and international writers and singers. Beverley Naidoo’s 2,000 novel, ‘The other side of truth’ was inspired by Saro-Wiwa’s execution. A novel, Eclipse, based on the events in Nigeria, was published by Richard North Patterson in 2009..
The folk duo Magpie included the song “Saro-Wiwa” on their album Give Light, with the credit: “Words and Music by Terry Leonino and Ken Saro-Wiwa.”
King Cobb Steelie, an Indie Rock – Jazz fusion band from Guelph, Ontario, Canada, wrote a song, “Rational” in their album Junior Relaxer, inspired by events surrounding Ken Saro-Wiwa ‘s death and the impact it had on those of us living in peaceful and more privileged communities.
The Finnish band Ultra Bra dedicated their song “Ken Saro-Wiwa on kuollut” (” Ken Saro-Wiwa is dead”) to the memory of Saro-Wiwa. The Italian band Il Teatro degli Orrori dedicated their song “A sangue freddo” (“In cold blood” – also the title track of their second album) to the memory of Saro-Wiwa. Amsterdam has named a street after Saro-Wiwa, the Ken Saro-Wiwastreet.
