Ken Saro Wiwa, Twenty Years On | By: Denrele Animasaun

“Leaders become great, not because of their power, but because of their ability to empower other”-John Maxwell

 This November 10th, marks the 20th anniversary of Ken Saro Wiwa’s death. Certainly in the UK, the media delivered a number of columns honouring him.

 I did the same thing three years ago. Ken was executed on trumped up charges and was executed with fellow Ogoni activists. Ken and his fellow Ogoni activists drew the world’s attention to the Abacha government and its inability to defend the rights of the Ogoni against the exploration and threatened the profits of Shell’s operations in the oil producing Delta.

 Of course, this was not very welcomed by those who directly benefited from corrupt activities by turning the other way, while the Ogoni people suffer as a result of the direct pollution of their land. Ken’s execution marked a seminal moment in Nigeria’s relationship in international relations and Nigeria was suspended from the commonwealth.

 In 2011, a UN report vindicated his environmental and political stance and criticised Shell and the Nigerian Government for the pollution of the Ogoniland. The report indicates that it will take $1 billion and up to 30 years to clear up of polluted areas. Talking about his father, Ken Jr., said;”My father went to the gallows an innocent man. He loved his country but refused to remain silent while his land and his people were being exploited. His real “crime” was in exposing the double standards of Shell, who had been quietly drilling oil for years in Nigeria, earning good profits for its shareholders but leaving the host community wallowing in levels of pollution that he described unflinchingly as “devastation”, pointing out that the operations in Ogoniland betrayed Shell’s own global standards”.

 Ken Saro Wiwa, has never been a man to sit and do nothing, he was committed to the welfare of his people and Nigeria in general . He once said: “The writer cannot be a mere storyteller; he cannot be a mere teacher; he cannot merely X-ray society’s weaknesses, its ills, its perils. He or she must be actively involved shaping its present and its future.”   He did exactly that.

 Permit me to share my tribute to the man of the people, Ken Saro Wiwa. 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 was born Kenule Benson Tsaro-Wiwa in Bori, in 1941, the son of Jim Beesom Wiwa, a businessman and community chief and a farmer.

 Mr Saro-Wiwa, was a larger than life character, with trademark pipe and safari top, you could not miss him. He was engaging and erudite and truly, a man of the people. Ken Saro-Wiwa Jr., in his book of his father, IN THE SHADOW OF A SAINT: A SON’S JOURNEY TO UNDERSTAND HIS FATHER’S LEGACY (2001), described him as truly special that “he walked at seven months, and his parents doted on him because he was, for the first seven years of his life, their only child.”

 Excerpts from: Requiem for Ken Saro-Wiwa

I am not surprised at the verdict of guilt returned on Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogonis last Tuesday. I had forseen it as clearly indicated in my column of Sunday 8 January 1995 and Sunday 24 September 1995 respectively as reproduced below:

“This is not requiem yet for Ken Saro-Wiwa. But you wake up one day to find the inimitable writer and social conscience pricker has been murdered. The pity of it is that it would be late to do something about it and the world again will modify, by many notches up, its contempt for all of us.

But then Ken would have left his footprints on the sands of time. We shall always remember him as a playwright, as a novelist; as the man who made us laugh at our foibles; as a man who directed our gaze and our attention at the plight of the oppressed majorities and at the game played by multi-national companies game that does not recognise our dignity as human beings. Or as anything at all.

 The ground is being prepared for murder. We have now been officially informed that Ken and some others will appear before a tribunal on the charge of murder. Murder trials are too common place to be unique. Outstanding, upstanding and wicked men and women have featured in famous trials. What would make the Ogoni trial unique would not be because Ken is famous (and rich! To borrow his Basi & Company slang), but because of the deviation attendant thereon.

 For a case of ordinary murder which can and should be tried by ordinary courts, a tribunal has been set up. That takes the action beyond the civil to the military. The immediate example that can be quoted is the Zango-Kataf trial and we were all witness to the injustices perpetrated.

 Verdict from Nigerian tribunal cannot usually be appealed. Or appeals lie only at the courts of the persecutors-Supreme Military Council, Provisional or Permanent Ruling Council or whatever name they may be called. And these bodies have not been famous for charity.

Dauda Komo, Rivers State Governor, has not done anything to lessen our suspicion. He had already pronounced the accused guilty even before their trial.

Of the three tribunal trial judges two were imported. If times were normal, something like that would raise no eyebrow. But these are very uncertain times … very suspicious times. Imported judges are suspect.

I have read a delegation of the judges coming to inspect facilities and calling on Komo (who seizes every opportunity to issue assurance which no one believes).

A new dimension has now been added: The Guild of Editor has been invited to look around and see that the Rivers Government can smell like nothing but roses.

And I have been reading some highly tendentious nonsense in some of the papers.

 And I am very apprehensive. The ground is subtly being prepared to commit legal murder. Just as we watch here in Nigeria, the international community is watching. Ken Saro-Wiwa is an international figure and prize winner and whoever will murder him is advised to weigh the repercussion.

What I find curious is the fact it did not take judicial notice of the published fact that Ambassador E A Azikiwe and Professor A H Yadudu appeared before the Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) on August 10 and 11, 1995.

Ambassador Azikiwe was reported to have pronounced Saro-Wiwa guilty of murder – a fact which Professor Yadudu, Legal Adviser to General Sani Abacha, was reported to have corroborated. There has been no refutal from official quarters about the proceedings and it cannot be that these officers of Government are blissfully unaware that their assertion can be prejudicial to the case of the accused.

There is a civilized norm about justice: it is never to pronounce an accused guilty until courts has found so.