Kenule Beeson "Ken" Saro-Wiwa (10 October 1941 – 10 November 1995)


was a Nigerian writer, television producer, environmental activist, and winner of the Right Livelihood Award for "exemplary courage in striving non-violently for civil, economic and environmental rights" and the Goldman Environmental Prize. 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.



At the peak of his non-violent campaign, he was tried by a special military tribunal for allegedly masterminding the gruesome murder of Ogoni chiefs at a pro-government meeting, and hanged in 1995 by the military dictatorship of General Sani Abacha. His execution provoked international outrage and resulted in Nigeria's suspension from the Commonwealth of Nations for over three years.


Early life
Born Kenule Tsaro-Wiwa, Saro-Wiwa was the son of Chief Jim Wiwa, a forest ranger that held a title in the Nigerian chieftaincy system, and his third wife Widu. He officially changed his name to Saro-Wiwa after the Nigerian Civil war.[6] He was married to Maria Saro Wiwa. is father's hometown was the village of Bori, Ogoniland, whose residents speak the Khana dialect of the 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, [8] 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. 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. The travelling drama troupe performed in Kano, Benin, Ilorin and Lagos and collaborated with the Nottingham Playhouse theatre group that included a young Judi Dench. 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 travelled back to Lagos and took a position at the University of Lagos 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 an 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 of 1967 to 1970, and intimates the political corruption and patronage in Nigeria's military regime of the time. Saro-Wiwa's war diaries, On a Darkling Plain, document his experience during the war. He was also a successful businessman and television producer. His satirical television series, Basi & Company, was wildly popular, with an estimated audience of 30 million.

In the early 1970s, Saro-Wiwa served as the Regional Commissioner for Education in the Rivers State Cabinet, but was dismissed in 1973 because of his support for Ogoni autonomy. In the late 1970s, he established a number of successful business ventures in retail and real estate, and during the 1980s concentrated primarily on his writing, journalism and television production. In 1977, he became involved in the political arena running as the candidate to represent Ogoni in the Constituent Assembly. Saro-Wiwa lost the election in a narrow margin. It was during this time he had a fall out with his friend Edwards Kobani.

His intellectual work was interrupted in 1987 when he re-entered the political scene, having been appointed by the newly installed dictator Ibrahim Babangida to aid the country's transition to democracy. But Saro-Wiwa soon resigned because he felt Babangida's supposed plans for a return to democracy were disingenuous. Saro-Wiwa's sentiments were proven correct in the coming years, as Babangida failed to relinquish power. In 1993, Babangida annulled Nigeria's general elections that would have transferred power to a civilian government, sparking mass civil unrest and eventually forcing him to step down, at least officially, that same year.


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.

Saro-Wiwa was Vice Chair of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) General Assembly from 1993 to 1995. UNPO is an international, nonviolent, and democratic organisation (of which MOSOP is a member). Its members are indigenous peoples, minorities, and unrecognised or occupied territories who have joined together to protect and promote their human and cultural rights, to preserve their environments and to find nonviolent solutions to conflicts which affect them.

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.

Arrest and execution
Saro-Wiwa was arrested again and detained by Nigerian authorities in June 1993 but was released after a month.[23] On 21 May 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 inciting 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. Many of these supposed witnesses later admitted that they had been bribed by the Nigerian government to support the criminal allegations. At least two witnesses who testified that Saro-Wiwa was involved in the murders of the Ogoni elders later recanted, stating that they had been bribed with money and offers of jobs with Shell to give false testimony, in the presence of Shell's lawyer.

The trial was widely criticised by human rights organisations and, half a year later, Ken Saro-Wiwa received the Right Livelihood Award for his courage, as well as the Goldman Environmental Prize.

On 8 November 1995, a military ruling council upheld the death sentences. The military government then immediately moved to carry them out. The prison in Port Harcourt was selected as the place of execution. Although the government wanted to carry out the sentences immediately, it had to wait two days for a makeshift gallows to be built. Within hours of the sentences being upheld, nine coffins were taken to the prison, and the following day a team of executioners was flown in from Sokoto to Port Harcourt.

On 10 November 1995, Saro-Wiwa and the rest of the Ogoni Nine were taken from the army base where they were being held to Port Harcourt prison. They were told that they were being moved to Port Harcourt because it was feared that the army base they were being held in might be attacked by Ogoni youths. The prison was heavily guarded by riot police and tanks, and hundreds of people lined the streets in anticipation of the executions. After arriving at Port Harcourt prison, Saro-Wiwa and the others were herded into a single room and their wrists and ankles were shackled. They were then led one by one to the gallows and executed by hanging, with Saro-Wiwa being the first. It took five tries to execute him due to faulty equipment. His last words were "Lord take my soul, but the struggle continues." After the executions, the bodies were taken to the Port Harcourt Cemetery under armed guard and buried.[28][29] Anticipating disturbances as a result of the executions, the Nigerian government deployed tens of thousands of troops and riot police to two southern provinces and major oil refineries around the country. The Port Harcourt Cemetery was surrounded by soldiers and tanks.

The executions provoked a storm of international outrage. The United Nations General Assembly condemned the executions in a resolution which passed by a vote of 101 in favor to 14 against and 47 abstentions. The European Union condemned the executions, which it called a "cruel and callous act", and imposed an arms embargo on Nigeria. The United States recalled its ambassador from Nigeria, imposed an arms embargo on Nigeria, and slapped travel restrictions on members of the Nigerian military regime and their families. The United Kingdom recalled its high commissioner in Nigeria, and British Prime Minister John Major called the executions "judicial murder." South Africa took a primary role in leading international criticism, with President Nelson Mandela urging Nigeria's suspension from the Commonwealth of Nations. Zimbabwe and Kenya also backed Mandela, with Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe backing Mandela's demand to suspend Nigeria's Commonwealth membership, but a number of other African leaders criticized the suggestion. Nigeria's membership in the Commonwealth of Nations was ultimately suspended, and Nigeria was threatened with expulsion if it did not transition to democracy in two years. The US and British governments also discussed the possibility of an oil embargo backed by a naval blockade of Nigeria.

In his 1989 short story "Africa Kills Her Sun", Saro-Wiwa in a resigned, melancholic mood, foreshadowed his own execution.


Lalasticlala. Mynd44

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Saro-Wiwa

ok

Unforgetable injustice against Ken Saro-Wiwa


Martin Luther King, Jr., reminded us that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

Twenty-five years ago, this November, my brother, Ken Saro-Wiwa, was executed for his work to rescue our Ogoni land in Nigeria from further destruction at the hands of Royal Dutch Shell. Not a day goes by that I do not miss Dede. He has especially been on my mind these past few years, and indeed more viscerally so in recent months. There has been this lingering unease that we, the associates of Saro-Wiwa, and seekers of social change and environmental justice, have failed him. Do not get me wrong. There have been some changes: some of them transformational such as the increasing focus on global corporate social responsibility as corporations are held more accountable for their environmental stewardship or lack of it. In parts of Ogoni, some incremental changes have occurred: the resumption of traditional environmental protection practices leading to greening of the land, fresh spring water no longer have shiny films of oil coatings or colorations. Farm yields are better, and fingerlings are back to some mangrove swamps.

x
The Ogonis have sustained the struggle and have vehemently resisted attempts to restart oil operations in Ogoni without addressing the demands of the people. This is a major win that has preserved our dignity, our land. The United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) has also undertaken an independent study (though paid for by the polluters) of environmental devastation of Ogoni by Shell. The UNEP study provides compelling evidence and data that go some way to validate my brother’s claims. The UNEP report on the environmental devastation in Ogoni lays the blame of ecological waste of my community firmly at Shell’s door and reports that it may take 25-30 years to clean up our environment. The formation of HYPREP and its funding will go some way to reclaim the land. The Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and the Presidential Task Force on Amnesty are some of the legacies of the struggle that, and if managed properly, can lead to positive outcomes.

Despite the above changes, the lingering feeling of letting Ken Saro-Wiwa down persists. The unresolved historical injustice against Ken and fellow Ogonis seems to suggest that the Ogoni arc of moral, if legal justice, is taking too long, and appears to be bending away from justice. I do not know how Ken would have felt about the handing over of the Nigerian presidency from a Niger Delta man, Goodluck Jonathan, to former military dictator Muhammadu Buhari. Former President Jonathan appointed Justice Ibrahim Auta, who presided over the Civil Disturbances Tribunal, a military appointed kangaroo court, which sentenced Ken to death, as Chief Judge of Abuja High Court and gave a National Award to General Sani Abacha. Nigeria’s current President Buhari described former military ruler Sani Abacha, whose family is still returning hundreds of millions of dollars of stolen money, as a ‘good man’ and appointed Colonel Hameed Ali (Rtd), who served as a member of the Civil Disturbances Tribunal as an enlisted military officer, as the Comptroller General of the Nigeria Customs.

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I do not know how Ken and eight other Ogonis, and indeed our esteemed four Chiefs murdered in June 1994 would have felt if they know that ‘Our School to Land’ hectares of land in Bori, on which the Centre for Excellence on Environmental Research was supposed to be built has now been converted to a prison and a cemetery. The only Federal presence in Ogoni in 25 years. A prison and A cemetery. What kind of message does this send to the people of the Niger Delta? That if you protest the exploitation of your oil, your land, and your rivers, you get killed, and there is nothing anyone can do? And after that, they would seize your agricultural land and build a prison and a cemetery.

It was to public knowledge, locally and internationally, that my brother was a non-violent, socio-economic, human and environmental rights activist whose non-violent activism was solely aimed at enhancing the welfare and well-being of Ogoni people, and the environmental protection of Ogoni land. His peaceful advocacy for environmental protection in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria angered the Royal Dutch Shell Oil Corporation, the perpetrators of environmental degradation in Ogoni land. Instigated by Royal Dutch Shell Oil Corporation, Nigeria’s military government in power at the time framed him on trumped up charges and eventually executed him.

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It is public record how Ken Saro-Wiwa was subjected to a sham trial before a bogus tribunal, and hastily executed by the military regime of the late Gen. Abacha on November 10, 1995 and two days after he was sentenced to death on November 8, 1995 without being afforded the opportunity of exercising his constitutional right of appeal. The decree under which he was tried required the records to be transmitted to the Armed Forces Ruling Council (AFRC) as precondition for confirmation of the sentence. This was not done. In Nigeria, the right of appeal is mandatory wherever a trial court or tribunal imposed a death sentence. To exercise the right of appeal, the person sentenced is entitled to be given the record of proceeding. Ken and our other eight leaders were murdered before the Tribunal compiled its record of proceedings denying them this right. This was a terminal censorship at its worst. There was national uproar and international condemnation occasioned by the executions. Nigeria was heavily sanctioned, ostracized, and isolated by the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations, the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, African countries, Asian, and Middle Eastern countries. Without a shadow of doubt, Ken Saro-Wiwa was arbitrarily and illegally executed by the Nigeria State for the socioeconomic and environmental causes he championed on behalf of his people and the Niger Delta. Up till date, there has been no apology from the Nigerian government, no exoneration, no declaration of innocence from the Federal Government of Nigeria despite many appeals. Only a prison and a cemetery.

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Recently, the extrajudicial killing of innocent Nigerians going about their normal lives by Nigeria police’s notorious Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), and the continuing summary extrajudicial killing of young Nigerians protesting the activities of SARS have made me to reflect again on the impunity that still persists in a democratic government. The response of Nigerians and indeed the international community through actions on the street, on social media and mainstream media brings back memories of November 10, 1995. This time, we must make sure the arc of moral universe bends only toward justice for the sanity of the families of those killed and for those whose conscience were pricked and joined in the struggle for social justice. It is long overdue for the Federal Government of Nigeria to exonerate Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight Ogoni activists illegally murdered by the military dictatorship of Abacha and apologize to the families. We demand a clear exoneration. The Ogoni people demand a closure to this horrific injustice. As Ken himself would admonish, we will not be silent over this matter, for silence would indeed be treason.
The struggle continues.
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In this article:





https://t.guardian.ng/opinion/unforgetable-injustice-against-ken-saro-wiwa/

It was a sad day

There are some stories you hear twice, as a kid and as an adult and it hits you differently. The Shell company shouldn't be in Nigeria anymore. They killed Saro Wiwa. Bribing people to give false testimony against their brethren in their own land. Jeez I'm ashamed for the Nigerian leaders. The leaders of powerful countries like the USA, China, Russia etc would have shut down the company long ago. No amount of money is worth selling yourself respect as a person, a company and even a country.

Your soul will finally rest when Ogoni land will cleanse up

So sad. I can't forget that day.. Abacha no go die well

Ken Ken.. As I often call you back then. The world will never forget. R.I.P my friend and brother.

Real nigga man! I think about all the great shit you did nigga!!

Just like yesterday, Abacha defied all pleas and lobbies, he ordered the killing of Ken. People never thought it would happen foreign news carried it.

Ken's Sun set at mid day.

10th November.,....

Ogoni people have tasted Nigeria 50 years after "liberation" from Biafra and ogoniland can tell the story.

Only Biafra can restore ogoniland. As for saro wiwa, he got what bargained for.

Great man.
He and his colleagues are heroes.

His story cannot be complete without remembering Ojukwu the Biafran war Lord who tried his best to secure his release from Abacha and when he found out that all his efforts were in vain , visited Ken in prison . Simply said ' good morning Ken' and left.

adadike:
His story cannot be complete without remembering Ojukwu the Biafran war Lord who tried his best to secure his release from Abacha and when he found out that all his efforts were in vain , visited Ken in prison . Simply said ' good morning Ken' and left.

Flatin0s always marginalising

Good morning Ken and left?
You have video evidence?

Flatin0s

Igbos:


Flatin0s always marginalising

Good morning Ken and left?
You have video evidence?

Flatin0s

in all of these, I never mentioned afonja. Stay on your lane. It is not your imagination and it is not your thread. Stay on your lane. As for the video, go and ask your father at home

adadike:
in all of these, I never mentioned afonja. Stay on your lane. It is not your imagination and it is not your thread. Stay on your lane. As for the video, go and ask your father at home

Flatin0 are you hurt by the truth?

Good morning from the land of the living.
you trusted Nigeria.

How time flies.
It took the saro wiwa 28 years (1967-1995) to see what Ojukwu saw in 1967, to discover that Biafra meant well afterall, it was painful when he found out he had been used and dumped.
In Abachas words,
**I won't allow saro wiwa to live and betray me the way he betrayed his brother Ojukwu. **
meaning no matter how hard he tried, the Fulani man still saw him as a Biafran.

Some politicians from that axis are presently on same mistake

Commonsense99:
How time flies.
It took the saro wiwa 28 years (1967-1995) to see what Ojukwu saw in 1967, to discover that Biafra meant well afterall, it was painful when he found out he had been used and dumped.
In Abachas words,
**I won't allow saro wiwa to live and betray me the way he betrayed his brother Ojukwu. **
meaning no matter how hard he tried, the Fulani man still saw him as a Biafran.

Some politicians from that axis are presently on same mistake

The Niger Delta struggle is much far on course before Ojukwu woke up with your Brafra


On February 23, 1966 Isaac Adaka Boro declared the secession of the "Niger Delta Republic": from Nigeria


long before


Lieutenant-Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, declared the sovereign state of Biafra in
30 May 1967,


The Niger Delta struggle was what Ken Saro Wiwa stood for.... Our ideology is quite unique and different

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKNVhg2SUHg

Bad

Ken Saro-Wiwa foolishly think he is smart by frolicking with late Gen.Abacha only for the tyrannt to gang up and kill him.

This made me cry

Good morning Ken Saro Wiwa