25 years ago today, Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists Saturday Dobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel
Gbooko, Paul Levera, Felix Nuate, Baribor Bera, Barinem Kiobel, and John
Kpuine. were executed
by hanging by the military government of Sani Abacha in Nigeria. Their deaths sparked an international outcry that lingers to this day.
Shell had been waging a lethal ecological war in Ogoni land since 1958
when it first discovered oil reserves in the area. The oil exploitation
has been concentrated in the coastal plains terraces to the north of the
Niger delta, which is home to the Ogoni people.
More than 900
million barrels of oil of estimated value 30 billion US dollars have
been mined from the area since the discovery of the oil reserves. 96 oil
wells connected five oilfields which were mostly operated by Shell and
where gas has been flared twenty-four hours a day for more than
thirty-five years. Between 1976 and 1991, over two million barrels of
oil polluted Ogoniland in 2,976 separate oil spills.
In 1990 the
Ogoni began to powerfully resist the destructive intervention of the
oil industry and the Nigerian dictatorship in their home, where despite
of the stupendous oil and gas wealth of their land, they were confronted
with environmental degradation, political marginalization, economic
strangulations particularly marked by an unemployment rate of over 70
percent, slavery, and possible extinction. What became known to as the
Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), with Ken Saro
Wiwa as its leader, they issued the Ogoni Bill of Rights (OBR) in which
they demanded ; the right to self-determination as a distinct people
in the Nigerian Federation;
adequate representation as of right in
all Nigerian national institutions;
the right to use a fair
proportion of the economic resources of their land for their development
and the right to control their environment.
This was followed by
the largest peaceful protest against a single corporation in to this
date, in which 300,000 Ogoni people marched against Shell’s ecological
war in January 1993.
The protest was followed by an extremely
violent crack down on the movement by the Nigerian government and Shell
whereby over 1,000 Ogoni people were murdered and 30,000 people
displaced. Ken Saro Wiwa
was born in 1941 as the eldest son in an Ogoni family. After leaving
university he pursued an academic career and became the most outspoken
environmental activist in the Niger Delta decrying the devastation of
the land, air and water at the hands of rich corporations and complicit
governmental authorities.
He was a writer, artist, journalist,
and television producer and became the President of the Association of
Nigerian Authors for three years until 1991, when he decided to devote
himself entirely to the nonviolent struggles of his fellow Ogoni people.
He
chose to fight using nonviolent resistance techniques such as poetry,
prose and peaceful protest. Saro-Wiwa was able to mobilize the people of
the Niger Delta
to push for adequate representation and the preservation of their
homeland, which was continuing to be destroyed by oil exploitation.
In 1994, Saro-Wiwa was given the Right Livelihood Award, often called the “alternative Nobel Prize”,
along with three other environmental activists. The following year he
was given the Goldman Environmental Foundation of California prize. It
didn’t take long before the Nigerian government felt their economic
interest in oil exploitation was being threatened by the growing
movement of Saro-Wiwa and his followers.
In May 1994, a meeting
took place which broke out in violent confrontation, and four of the
elders were killed. Even though Saro-Wiwa had been barred from attending
the meeting, he and 8 other Ogoni leaders were held responsible and
arrested. A trial took place, though independent and international
witnesses claim the various circumstances surrounding the proceedings
strayed from the laws outlined in the Nigerian Constitution and
international human rights law. Accused of murder and without legal
counsel nor right to appeal, Saro-Wiwa and the other 8 Ogoni leaders, were hanged on November 10th, 1995.
25 years have passed since then but despite
continueous protests, no justice has been served to the Ogoni people
and neocolonial violence persists! While oil production has ceased,
pipelines operated by Shell still traverse the land, creeks and
waterways. Leakages – caused by corroded pipelines as well as bandits –
mean that the area is still plagued by oil spills to this date. The
Nigerian Government officially launched a clean-up programme in
Ogoniland however, communities are still waiting for
emergency measures to be taken and clean-up to begin.
While
Shell admitted that its oil operations have polluted large areas of the
Niger Delta it resists charges of complicity in human rights abuses.
However, confidential memos, faxes, witness statements and other
documents released in 2009, clearly showed the company regularly paid the
military to stop the peaceful protest movement MOSOP against the
pollution, even helping to plan raids on villages suspected of opposing
the company.
To this day, despite facts that tie Shell to their murders and to
the continuing abuse of the Ogoni people, Shell still denies culpability
and continues to drill for oil in Nigeria.Moreover, Shell continues to undermine democracy and feed
into corruption in the country by engaging in rigged trade deals that
served business’ interests rather than the welfare of the people. "Shell must not get away with
this," said Osai Ojigho, director of Amnesty International Nigeria."We will continue to fight until every last trace of oil is removed from Ogoniland."
Ken Saro-Wiwa once said: "I am more dangerous dead" — a quote that remains true 25 years after his death.
The following converging factors give this anniversary particular resonance. The
upsurge of activism in Nigeria last month has been met with fatal
repression but has also brought fresh aspirations in this 60th
anniversary year of independence. The COVID-19 pandemic and the Black
Lives Matter movement continue to expose economic inequality and racial
injustice as well as the uneven accountability of governments; at the
same time, both challenge not only commitments to corporate
responsibility, but also the fundamentals of corporate purpose..This day will ever be remembered now and always as a day, the innocent blood of Ken Saro-Wiwa and his fellow activists were shed.
"Dance your anger and your joys,
Dance the military guns to silence,
Dance oppression and injustice to death,
Dance my people,
For we have seen tomorrow
And there is an Ogoni star in the sky."
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