Ten years ago this November, the military government of Nigeria executed Ken Saro-Wiwa, an activist, writer and environmental journalist. Commemorative events for 2005 will include demonstrations, conferences and publications in major cities worldwide. .
For environmental journalists, the anniversary may also provide a moment to assess the human cost of international oil and mining operations and to report on efforts underway that might minimize resource conflicts in the future. It is also a time to remember the many other journalists killed in the line of duty.
Ken Saro-Wiwa was an Ogoni, one of about half a million ethnic minority Nigerian people who live in the oil-rich delta region. He was a popular newspaper columnist, the author of several books and the writer / producer of a popular Nigerian television program, “Basi and Company.” He had also been a university teacher and a regional government official.
In 1990, Saro-Wiwa started the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP). Within three years, the movement mobilized widespread support against severe ecological conditions in the region. Although the oil industry had pumped billions of barrels of oil from Nigeria, ordinary people were no better off – in fact, as Saro-Wiwa argued, their lives were much worse as a result.
In response to massive non-violent protests, Shell Oil Co. suspended operations in the immediate Ogoniland region in 1993. However, Saro-Wiwa continued to hold the oil company responsible for “ecological war” and for organizing, arming and providing intelligence to Nigerian military units which, he said, were conducting a “dirty war” against the Ogoni people.
After many overnight detentions and run-ins with Nigerian officials, Saro-Wiwa was arrested in 1994 and charged with the murders of four pro-government Ogoni leaders. Since the murders were committed when Saro-Wiwa was in police custody in a distant town, and since no real defense was permitted, the trial was universally considered to be an injustice. Saro-Wiwa told the media: “I was found guilty even before I was tried.”
Calls for commuting Saro-Wiwa’s death sentence came from the highest levels of the human rights and United Nations communities, yet Nigeria’s military leaders ordered him to be hung at the prison in Port Harcout.
The execution on November 10, 1995 outraged the international community. Nelson Mandela, then president of South Africa, called it a “heinous act.” US President Bill Clinton said it flouted “even the most basic international norms and universal standards of human rights.” Prime Minister John Major described events as "a fraudulent trial, a bad verdict, an unjust sentence,” which, he said, “has now been followed by judicial murder." Dozens of ambassadors were recalled. Nigeria was suspended from the Commonwealth countries. International loans were cancelled.
Nigeria became a pariah state and never quite recovered its reputation. A few years after the execution, Nigerian Gen. Sani Abacha died of a heart attack. Democratic elections were held, but the winner was another general.
Today, ten years after Saro-Wiwa’s execution, very little has improved in the Niger delta. Rusted pipelines are still spilling crude oil. Cleanup rarely happens. Most fish and wildlife are long gone and even subsistence agriculture is impossible in many areas. Enormous flares of natural gas still light up villages and fields day and night. The army, still known as the “kill-and-gos,” randomly arrests dissidents and ruthlessly destroys whole villages when unrest emerges.
Even so, Shell Oil Co. began negotiating with MOSOP for a return to Ogoniland in the summer of 2005, helped by the UK's International Centre for Reconciliation. One environmental bonus: better company access to pipelines might mean fewer spills.
While Nigeria itself has not changed, international reaction to Saro-Wiwa’s execution has been relatively strong. For example:
• The U.S. State Dept. and U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office began meeting in 2000 with oil and mining companies, together with human rights, labor and corporate responsibility groups, to develop “Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights.”
• Also in 2000, the United Nations launched its Global Compact initiative to bring oil and mining companies together with human rights, labor and environmental groups.
• And in 2001, a lawsuit against Shell Oil Co., brought under the Alien Tort Law Claims Act by Ken Wiwa, son of Ken Saro-Wiwa, survived motions for dismissal and remains active in federal court for the Southern District of New York. The suit charges that Shell was complicit in human rights abuses in Nigeria.
These are just the beginning, according to Ken Wiwa. “We need binding legislation to ensure that corporations can be held to account for their actions because they have forfeited the right to self-regulation,” he said in March, 2005. “We want the world to recognize that corporate immunity is a grave and gathering threat to good governance, peace and security around the world.”
Further reading:
Writing By Ken Saro-Wiwa:
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A Forest of Flowers
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Sozaboy: A Novel in Rotten English
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A Month and a Day: A Detention Diary (London: Penguin, 1995)
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Before I Am Hanged: Ken Saro-Wiwa, Literature, Politics, and Dissent by Onookome Okome (Editor)
By Ken Saro-Wiwa’s son, Ken Wiwa
In the Shadow of a Saint, (South Royalton VT, Steerforth Press, 2001)
By other authors:
Ken Saro-Wiwa: A Bio-Critical Study by Femi Ojo-Ade
Ken Saro-Wiwa: Writer and Political Activist by Craig W. McLuckie (Editor), Aubrey McPhail (Editor)
Ogoni's Agonies: Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Crisis in Nigeria by Abdul-Rasheed Na'Allah (Editor)
