Ken Saro-Wiwa
Here
is an interesting peek into the life of a foremost Nigerian
environmentalist who was brutally murdered by a military dictator
alongside eight others.
'Ken' Saro-Wiwa was a member of the Ogoni people, an ethnic
minority in Nigeria whose homeland, Ogoniland, in the Niger Delta has
been targeted for crude oil extraction since the 1950s and which has
suffered extreme environmental damage from decades of indiscriminate
petroleum waste dumping. Initially as spokesperson, and then as
president, of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP),
Saro-Wiwa led a nonviolent campaign against environmental degradation
of the land and waters of Ogoniland by the operations of the
multinational petroleum industry , especially the Royal Dutch Shell
company. He was also an outspoken critic of the Nigerian government,
which he viewed as reluctant to enforce environmental regulations on the
foreign petroleum companies operating in the area.
EARLY LIFE AND EDUCATION
Born Kenule Tsaro-Wiwa, the son of Jim Wiwa (1904—2005), a forest
ranger and his third wife, Widu. He changed his name to Saro-Wiwa after
the Nigerian Civil War (1967—1970). His father's home town is the
village of Bori, Ogoniland whose residents speak the Khana dialect of
Ogoni language. Saro-Wiwa spent his childhood in an Anglican home and
eventually proved himself to be an excellent student; he received
primary education at a Native Authority school in Bori, then attended
secondary school at Government College Umuahia.
A distinguished student, Saro-Wiwa was captain of the table tennis
team and amassed school prizes in History and English. At Umuahia, he
was the only student from Ogoni land but fellow students were mandated
to speak English which made Saro-Wiwa feel Nigerian; he embraced the
language as a useful way to communicate to a larger audience at home and
abroad. On completion of secondary education, he obtained a scholarship
to study English at the University of Ibadan. At Ibadan, he plunged
into academic and cultural interests, he won departmental prizes in 1963
and 1965 and worked for a drama troupe.
CAREER AND CIVIL WAR
He briefly became a teaching assistant at the University of Lagos
and later at University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Saro-Wiwa was an African
literature lecturer in Nsukka when the Civil war broke out, he supported
the Federal Government and had to leave the region for his hometown of
Bori. On his journey to Port-Harcourt, he witnessed the multitudes of
refugees returning to the East, a scene he described as a "sorry sight
to see". Three days after his arrival, nearby Bonny was liberated by
federal troops. He and his family then stayed in Bonny, he traveled back
to Lagos and took a position at UNILAG which did not last long as he
was called back to Bonny.
He was called back to become the Civilian Administrator for the
port city of Bonny in the Niger Delta and during the Nigerian Civil War
positioned himself as an Ogoni leader dedicated to the Federal cause. He
followed his job as an administrator with appointment as a commissioner
in the old Rivers State.
His best known novel, Sozaboy: A Novel in Rotten English, tells the
story of a naive village boy recruited to the army during the Nigerian
Civil War and intimates the political corruption and patronage in
Nigeria's military regime of the time.
PERSONAL LIFE AND FAMILY
Saro-Wiwa and his wife Maria had five children, who grew up with
their mother in the United Kingdom while their father remained in
Nigeria. They include Ken Wiwa and Noo Saro-Wiwa , both journalists and
writers, and Noo's twin Zina Saro-Wiwa , a journalist and filmmaker. In
addition, Saro-Wiwa had two daughters (Singto & Adele) with another
woman. He also had another son, Kwame Saro-Wiwa, who was only 1 year old
when his father was executed.
ACTIVISM
In 1990, Saro-Wiwa began devoting most of his time to human rights
and environmental causes, particularly in Ogoniland. He was one of the
earliest members of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People
(MOSOP), which advocated for the rights of the Ogoni people. The Ogoni
Bill of Rights, written by MOSOP, set out the movement's demands,
including increased autonomy for the Ogoni people, a fair share of the
proceeds of oil extraction, and remediation of environmental damage to
Ogoni lands. In particular, MOSOP struggled against the degradation of
Ogoni lands by Royal
Dutch Shell
In 1992, Saro-Wiwa was imprisoned for several months, without
trial, by the Nigerian military government. In January 1993, MOSOP
organised peaceful marches of around 300,000 Ogoni people – more than
half of the Ogoni population – through four Ogoni urban centres, drawing
international attention to their people's plight. The same year the
Nigerian government occupied the region militarily.
TRIAL AND EXECUTION
On May 21, 1994 four Ogoni chiefs (all on the conservative side of a
schism within MOSOP over strategy) were brutally murdered. Saro-Wiwa
had been denied entry to Ogoniland on the day of the murders, but he was
arrested and accused of incitement to them. 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 eight
other MOSOP leaders who, along with Saro-Wiwa, became known as the Ogoni
Nine.
Some of the defendants' lawyers resigned in protest against the
alleged rigging of the trial by the Abacha regime. The resignations left
the defendants to their own means against the tribunal, which continued
to bring witnesses to testify against Saro-Wiwa and his peers.
On November 10, 1995, Saro-Wiwa and the rest of the Ogoni Nine were
killed by hanging by military personnel. They were buried in
Port-Harcourt Cemetery. Saro-Wiwa was 54. He would have been 76
tomorrow.
It took five attempts to hang Ken Saro-Wiwa before he spoke his last words and his body went limp. "Lord take my soul, but the struggle continues," were his final words before he died blindfolded and dangling from a rope.
Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa Polytechnic, formerly Rivers State
Polytechnic, is named after him. Also, a street in Amsterdam,
Netherlands, has been named after Saro-Wiwa; the Ken Saro-Wiwastraat.
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