{"id":2041,"date":"2025-08-02T10:36:43","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T10:36:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2025\/08\/02\/nigeria-kills-her-sun-death-and-vindication-for-ken-saro-wiwa-ogoni-nine\/"},"modified":"2025-08-02T10:36:43","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T10:36:43","slug":"nigeria-kills-her-sun-death-and-vindication-for-ken-saro-wiwa-ogoni-nine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/2025\/08\/02\/nigeria-kills-her-sun-death-and-vindication-for-ken-saro-wiwa-ogoni-nine\/","title":{"rendered":"Nigeria kills her sun: Death and vindication for Ken Saro-Wiwa, Ogoni Nine"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Lagos, Nigeria \u2013<\/strong> \u201cLord, take my soul, but the struggle continues,\u201d the man said, before his body went limp. It swung gently from the makeshift gallows, hurriedly built a few days earlier. Before that morning, the prison had last enforced a death sentence 30 years earlier, during British rule.<\/p>\n

It was November 10, 1995.<\/p>\n

For weeks, local activists from the small Ogoniland settlement in Nigeria\u2019s lush Niger Delta region had been protesting against oil spills seeping into their farmland and the gas flares choking them. The Niger Delta, which produces the crude that earned Nigeria 80 percent of its foreign revenues, teemed with gun-carrying soldiers from the military dictatorship of the feared General Sani Abacha. They responded to the protests with force.<\/p>\n

That day, the loudest Ogoni voice \u2013 renowned playwright and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa<\/a> \u2013 faced his fate. A week earlier, a military tribunal had declared his sentence. And just the day before, five executioners tasked with carrying it out had flown in from the northern city of Sokoto.<\/p>\n

At 5am that morning, Saro-Wiwa and the eight other Ogoni activists accused alongside him of murder were moved from the army camp where they had been held to the prison grounds in Port Harcourt, the regional hub a few hours drive from Ogoniland. There, they were herded into a room and shackled. Then, one after the other, they were led out to the gallows. Saro-Wiwa went first.<\/p>\n

It took five attempts to kill him. After one failed tug, the activist cried out in frustration: \u201cWhy are you people treating me like this? What kind of country is this?\u201d<\/p>\n

On the final attempt, the gallows finally functioned as they were supposed to. By 3:15pm, all nine men had been executed. Their bodies were placed in coffins, loaded into vehicles and escorted by armed guards to the public cemetery. On the streets, thousands of horrified people watched the procession as soldiers fired tear gas into the air to quell any thoughts of rebellion. No relatives of the nine men were allowed into the cemetery. There were no dignified burials, no parting words from loved ones.<\/p>\n

Thirty years later, on June 12 this year, Nigeria\u2019s Democracy Day, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu pardoned Saro-Wiwa and the others \u2013 the Ogoni Nine as they had become known. He went on to call them heroes and awarded them prestigious national titles.<\/p>\n

For Saro-Wiwa\u2019s daughter Noo Saro-Wiwa, who is now aged 49, and other relatives<\/a> of the executed men, the pardons were moving but insufficient. In Ogoniland, it reopened old wounds that remained as deep as when they were first inflicted all those years ago.<\/p>\n

\"Ken
Protesters march to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, the city where he was put to death [File: Sunday Alamba\/AP]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Saro Wiwa, accidental environmental activist<\/h2>\n

Before his death at age 54, Saro-Wiwa wanted to be known as a great writer.<\/p>\n

A bundle of energy, he dabbled in many things, but books were his true love. More than two dozen books, poems and essays bore his name. His radio dramas and TV plays were wildly successful, particularly one that mocked the corrupt Nigerian elite, which took over after independence in 1960. In the short story Africa Kills Her Sun, Saro-Wiwa eerily warned of his killing: A man condemned to death pens a long letter to his lover, Zole, on the eve of his execution, telling her not to grieve.<\/p>\n

Saro-Wiwa\u2019s execution made him a martyr for the Ogoni people \u2013 the man whose death drew international attention to their plight.<\/p>\n

In 1958, when Nigeria discovered oil in the southern Niger Delta, of which Ogoniland is a part, a 17-year-old Saro-Wiwa wrote letters to the government and oil companies questioning how delta communities would benefit from oil dollars. Later on, his essays highlighted how Ogoniland still lacked infrastructure \u2013 roads, electricity, water \u2013 despite the oil.<\/p>\n

In October 1990, Saro-Wiwa led the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), which he cofounded, to present the Ogoni Bill of Rights to the Nigerian government. In it, the Ogoni people denounced the dominance of the majority tribes (Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo) and the sidelining of minorities like the Ogoni. They called for political autonomy and direct control of oil profits, saying:<\/p>\n

\u201cThirty years of Nigerian independence has done no more than outline the wretched quality of the leadership of the Nigerian majority ethnic groups and their cruelty as they have plunged the nation into ethnic strife, carnage, war, dictatorship, retrogression and the greatest waste of national resources ever witnessed in world history, turning generations of Nigerians, born and unborn into perpetual debtors.\u201d<\/p>\n

It marked Saro-Wiwa as a thorn in the side of the military dictators, and from 1992 to 1993, he was arrested without charge several times. Still, he continued to condemn the slow death he said Ogonis were sentenced to.<\/p>\n

\u201cI accuse the oil companies of practising genocide against the Ogoni,\u201d he wrote in one article. The Nigerian government, he said, was complicit.<\/p>\n

Saro-Wiwa\u2019s fervour took hold in Ogoniland. About 300,000 Ogonis, out of a population of half a million, marched with him in January 1993 to peacefully protest against the Nigerian government and Shell, the oil company that they said bore particular responsibility for the oil spills in their part of the delta.<\/p>\n

It was one of the largest mass demonstrations Nigeria had ever seen at the time. Protesters carried signs with messages like: \u201cAssassins, go home.\u201d The protests were so large that the world began to notice the Ogonis and the slight, articulate man speaking for them. Soon, he was speaking at the United Nations, presenting the Ogonis\u2019 case there. Environmental rights groups like Greenpeace noted and supported his activism.<\/p>\n

By the end of that year, riots were breaking out, and angry protesters had destroyed oil pipelines worth billions of dollars. Shell was forced to suspend operations. The government promptly deployed a special task force to suppress what is now known as the Ogoni Rebellion. Soldiers brutally put down protests, carried out extrajudicial killings, and raped and tortured scores of people, according to reports by Amnesty International.<\/p>\n

\"Nigeria
Oil is seen on the surface of a creek in March 2011 near an illegal oil refinery in Ogoniland outside Port Harcourt in Nigeria\u2019s Delta region, which has suffered from widespread ecological damage [Sunday Alamba\/AP]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In-fighting and mob actions in Ogoniland<\/h2>\n

By 1994 and with soldiers still in Ogoniland, tensions were running high. Splits within the MOSOP leadership were also emerging with one side, led by Saro-Wiwa, calling for a stronger stance against the government and another preaching pacifism.<\/p>\n

Edward Kobani was a childhood friend of Saro-Wiwa\u2019s. He was also a pacifist who opposed his friend\u2019s mobilisation of young people in rallies that rang with angry rhetoric. His stance against violence upturned their relationship. More broadly, the mood in the region was turning against the pacifists, who were increasingly seen as sellouts colluding with the military regime and Shell although there is no evidence they were working with either.<\/p>\n

On May 21, 1994, word spread that some MOSOP leaders had gathered for a meeting at the chief\u2019s palace in Ogoniland\u2019s Gokana district but soldiers had blocked Saro-Wiwa from entering the area. Incensed, rioters marched to the meeting point and attacked those they could lay their hands on. Four of them \u2013 Kobani, Alfred Badey, and the brothers Samuel and Theophilus Orage, who were Saro-Wiwa\u2019s in-laws \u2013 were clubbed with everything from broken bottles to sharpened rakes. Then they were set on fire.<\/p>\n

The Nigerian military immediately accused Saro-Wiwa of inciting the killings and arrested him the next day. At a news conference, the military administrator of Rivers State, which Ogoniland is part of, declared MOSOP a \u201cterror group\u201d and Saro Wiwa, a \u201cdictator who has \u2026 no room for dissenting views\u201d. Eight other MOSOP leaders were arrested: Nordu Eawo, Saturday Dobee, John Kpuine, Paul Levera, Felix Nuate, Daniel Gbooko, Barinem Kiobel and Baribor Bera.<\/p>\n

In detention, the men were reportedly chained, beaten and denied medication or visits. Amnesty International described their trial by military tribunal as a \u201csham\u201d. Civilian defence lawyers were assaulted and their evidence discarded. In protest, the lawyers boycotted the hearings.<\/p>\n

Reports at the time described how Saro-Wiwa, knowing he was already condemned, looked ahead blankly or flipped through a newspaper in court.<\/p>\n

\"Saro
Mourners drop offerings in a bowl next to the casket of civil rights activist John Kpuine, executed with Ken Saro-Wiwa and seven other Ogoni activists, during his reburial in Bera in the Gokana district of Rivers State on November 12, 2005 [Pius Utomi Ekpei\/AFP]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fighting for justice for the Ogoni Nine<\/h2>\n

Noo Saro-Wiwa was 19 and in her second year of college when her father was executed. Born in Port Harcourt, she lived and studied in London. On the day of the execution, she had no inkling that her world had changed. It wasn\u2019t until late that night that her mother, Maria, managed to reach her on her landline.<\/p>\n

Her first reaction was shock. Noo, who is now a travel writer and author based in London, told Al Jazeera in a phone call that it was hard to imagine the man who would amble into her room while she idled on her bed and thrust a book in her face with a \u201cRead this!\u201d could be killed in such a way. After all, powerful international voices had spoken up to pressure the Nigerian government to release him: Nelson Mandela was among them.<\/p>\n

Noo\u2019s brother, Ken, was in New Zealand to attend the opening of the annual Commonwealth of Nations meeting and press for Nigeria\u2019s suspension. The association of former British colonial states was an important aid avenue for Nigeria at the time.<\/p>\n

The world, too, reacted with shock. Nigeria was suspended from the Commonwealth, and the United States and several other countries severed diplomatic ties. Noo remembers wondering why United Kingdom news channels were repeatedly running the story. That\u2019s when it dawned on Noo how great her father\u2019s task had been.<\/p>\n

Her family was determined to get justice, but it was a long road, Noo explained. In 1996, her brother and uncle sued Shell, which the Ogoni Nine families accused of complicity by aiding the military. Shell denied the allegations.<\/p>\n

The case, filed in the US under a law that allows for jurisdiction in foreign matters, dragged on until 2009 when the company settled for $15.5m. Shell said it was \u201chumanitarian and legal fees\u201d.<\/p>\n

It mostly went towards paying lawyers and establishing a trust fund that still provides scholarships to Ogoni students, Noo said. It\u2019s annoying, though, she added, that critics claim her family and the others got rich on the settlement.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a tiny amount,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd even if it weren\u2019t, who wants their parent killed for a $15m settlement?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ogoni\"
Two Nigerians from the Ogoni tribe and other environmental activists protest against Shell in front of a petrol station in Quito, Ecuador in February 1996 [File: Reuters]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For many years, Noo said, she couldn\u2019t bear to visit Nigeria or hear the name \u201cShell\u201d without feeling overwhelmed. The company was also taken to The Hague in 2017 by a group of Ogoni Nine widows with the support of Amnesty International; however, a judge ruled there was no evidence that Shell was complicit in the government executions.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Amnesty said in a 2017 report<\/a> that it had found evidence that Shell executives had met with military officials and \u201cencouraged\u201d them to suppress protests. The company, the report said, transported soldiers and in \u201cat least one instance paid a military commander notorious for human rights violations\u201d.<\/p>\n

Shell denied the claims and said it pleaded with the government for clemency for the Ogoni Nine.<\/p>\n

Noo has since found the strength to visit Ogoniland. She first went back in 2005, 10 years after her father\u2019s execution. The region has become even more volatile as ethnic militias now patrol the creeks, attacking soldiers, controlling oil pipelines and kidnapping oil workers at sea.<\/p>\n

Noo said her next book will focus on the devastation in her homeland. Her brother and mother died in the past decade, leaving her and Zina, her US-based twin sister. The losses set her back, she said, but she now frequently travels back home to document the oil spills, which are still going on, although Shell never resumed operations after the 1993 protests.<\/p>\n

Life as a writer abroad contrasts jarringly with her life back home, Noo said. One week, she is walking down the streets of Paris, and the next, she is standing in oil-soaked farms in Ogoniland. But her work in Nigeria, she added, reminds her of her father\u2019s struggle.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy father was a real kind of David vs Goliath,\u201d Noo said. \u201cMost people back then had never even heard of Ogoni. As I get older, I\u2019m just always more in awe of what he achieved. It was quite incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ogoni
The Red Rebel Brigade, a performance activist arts group created as a response to the global environmental crisis, takes part in a protest outside the Shell Centre in London to remember the Ogoni Nine on the 29th anniversary of their executions [File: Mark Kerrison\/Getty Images]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Too little, too late?<\/h2>\n

Shell\u2019s leaky pipes continue to pump oil into the earth all these years later, environmental groups say. The company, which plans to sell its onshore assets and exit the Niger Delta after so many years of controversy, has always claimed its pipes are being sabotaged.<\/p>\n

Calculated or accidental, the oily devastation is visible in the eerie stillness of Ogoniland\u2019s mangroves, which should be alive with the sounds of chirping insects and croaking frogs. In the murky rivers floating with oil, old, stooped fishermen cast nets that bring up air.<\/p>\n

Nubari Saatah, an Ogoni, has long advocated for Ogonis to control their oil wealth, just as activists before him did. The president of the Niger Delta Congress political movement said Ogonis have remained resentful since the rebellion, primarily because Nigeria has not repaired the ruptured relationship or rectified injustices by giving Ogonis control over their land.<\/p>\n

Saatah, author of the 2022 book What We Must Do<\/a>: Towards a Niger Delta Revolution, regularly appears on radio and TV shows to comment on the Niger Delta crisis and often places the blame for the region\u2019s instability at the government\u2019s doorstep.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe violent militancy that engulfed the Niger Delta was a direct reaction to the violence visited on the peaceful methods employed by Ogoni,\u201d Saatah said.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnfortunately for the Ogoni, the executions brought about a leadership vacuum that has still not been filled till today,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

A UN Environmental Programme<\/a> report in 2011 found that more than 50 years of oil extraction in Ogoniland had caused the water in much of the region to be contaminated with extremely high levels of toxic hydrocarbons like benzene. In one village, benzene in the groundwater was up to 900 times the accepted World Health Organization standard.<\/p>\n

Cleaning up the devastation and restoring the land would require the \u201cworld\u2019s most wide-ranging and long-term oil clean-up exercise ever undertaken\u201d, the report said.<\/p>\n

Although Nigeria and Shell committed in 2012 to a clean-up through the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP), more than a decade later, progress has been slow and hard to measure, critics said.<\/p>\n

Saatah blamed the government for the lack of results. Abuja, he said, has not funded the programme as promised. To Ogonis, that feels like a message that the government does not care, he added. Shell, meanwhile, has contributed $270m to the project. Al Jazeera reached out to HYPREP for comment but did not receive a response.<\/p>\n

Still, there is some change, Saatah noted. When the clean-up started, government authorities installed a sign at the community well in Saatah\u2019s village of Bomu that read: \u201cWarning! Do not drink this water.\u201d<\/p>\n

People hardly glanced at the post as they fetched their drinking water, largely because there were no alternative water sources. In the past five or so years, however, HYPREP has installed potable water tanks in Bomu. Saatah worries, though, about whether the government will maintain the costs in the long run and whether the burden will be put on his community.<\/p>\n

\"Ogoni
Members of Nigeria\u2019s Ogoni community at a rally in New York in May 2009 [Bebeto Matthews\/AP]<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some in Ogoniland see Abuja\u2019s renewed interest through the recent pardoning of the Ogoni Nine as suspicious, coming as it does at a time when Nigeria is in the throes of one of its worst financial declines and when the government is desperate to extract and sell more crude oil.<\/p>\n

Resuming active exploration in Ogoniland, which stopped in 1993, could yield up to 500,000 barrels of crude per day, a MOSOP official, which is still operating, told reporters last year. That would be on top of the current 1.7 million barrels per day produced from other parts of the delta.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lines are there to be connected between oil resumption and the pardon of the Ogoni Nine,\u201d Saatah said. The pardons, he said, were to sweeten the Ogoni people and avoid any opposition.<\/p>\n

As things stand, though, Ogoni communities are unlikely to agree to renewed exploration, he added, first, because locals still cannot control oil profits and, second, because rather than make Ogonis happy, Tinubu\u2019s pardoning of the Ogoni Nine has only worsened tensions internally, Saatah said.<\/p>\n

Rifts that emerged during the 1994 crisis have not healed. The fact that the president\u2019s speech did not acknowledge the four murdered MOSOP members in the mob action that led to Saro-Wiwa\u2019s arrest has angered their families and supporters, some of whom fault the aggressive stance of Saro-Wiwa for what happened.<\/p>\n

Noo and the Ogoni Nine families are not completely satisfied with the government\u2019s move either.<\/p>\n

The national honour was a welcome surprise, Noo said, but the pardons were not enough.<\/p>\n

\u201cA pardon suggests that something, that a crime had been committed in the first place,\u201d she said. \u201cBut nothing\u2019s been committed.\u201d<\/p>\n

What she wants, she added, is for the conviction of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni Nine to be thrown out of the country\u2019s history books.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lagos, Nigeria \u2013 \u201cLord, take my soul, but the struggle continues,\u201d the man said, before his body went limp. It swung gently from the makeshift gallows, hurriedly built a few days earlier. Before that morning, the prison had last enforced a death sentence 30 years earlier, during British rule. It was November 10, 1995. For … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pronews.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}