Chris McGreal looks at the man behind Nigeria’s greatest martyr — and finds someone who is not a saint
Ken Saro-Wiwa barely raised his head from the wooden dock to acknowledge the man who probably did as much as any witness to despatch him to the gallows. Across the dilapidated courtroom, Mohammed Kobani gave a painstaking account of watching his brother, Edward, die — broken bottles sliced his skin and a rake was driven through his skull.
Kobani went on to describe the brutal deaths of three other Ogoni chiefs in the same mob attack, and how he himself was able to escape. Spectators strained to hear Kobani above the clattering fans of Port Harcourt’s dank courtroom. His brother, Saro-Wiwa’s friend and mentor, had been sacrificed, Kobani said, to Saro-Wiwa’s thirst for power.
While Kobani spoke, Saro-Wiwa skimmed a newspaper or stared blankly ahead as though he were a mere bystander. He rightly viewed his trial as a farce. Nigeria’s military government had lined up an array of witnesses to “prove” that he had ordered the mob murders of four rivals who had questioned his leadership of the only political force in Ogoniland, the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (Mosop).
Key witnesses were bought off or intimidated into giving false testimony. Even then, their thin and inconsistent evidence, accusing Saro- Wiwa of personally ordering the murders, would hardly have convinced a neutral jury. But Nigeria’s dictator, General Sani Abacha, had taken the case out of the hands of the civil courts and placed it with one of his pliable semi-military “special tribunals”.
The speed with which the military hustled Saro-Wiwa to the gallows after his conviction spoke volumes for the real intent of the trial. The hangings, on the day the Commonwealth Conference opened in New Zealand, drew a torrent of international revulsion. In his defence, Saro-Wiwa said he could never have ordered the deaths. The four victims were his friends, particularly Edward Kobani whom he had known since childhood.
Saro-Wiwa first became involved in Ogoni politics seven years ago. It was “The Voice'”, he said in a statement at his trial, which directed him to launch Mosop. “One night in late 1989, as I sat in my study working on a new book, I received a call to put myself, my abilities, my resources, so carefully nurtured over the years, at the feet of the Ogoni people and similar dispossessed, dispirited and disappearing peoples in Nigeria and elsewhere.”
The Voice was that of the “Spirit of Ogoni”, a fetish god at the heart of Ogoni culture. Christian churches flourish in Ogoniland, but the new faith rarely overcomes the inhabitants’ awe for their Spirit’s power.
Mosop was built around the “Ogoni Bill of Rights” and its demands that the half-million people squeezed into borders 30 miles long and 20 miles wide, on the edge of the old Biafran state should be granted a slice of petroleum revenues and political autonomy. It accused the military of consigning the Ogonis, who make up just 0,5% of Nigeria’s population, to slavery and possible extinction at the hands of foreign oil companies.
But most anger was directed at Shell for what Saro-Wiwa described as a slow genocide. “Lands, streams and creeks are totally and continually polluted; the atmosphere is forever charged with hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide; many villages experience the infernal quaking of the wrath of gas flares,” the Bill of Rights said.
Shell was not so much guilty of plotting the Ogonis’ extermination as barely acknowledging they existed. In Britain, the company boasts of burying its pipelines without trace and restoring hedgerows. In Nigeria, Shell did little more for the Ogonis than curve the metal monstrosities around homes as it drove pipes, above ground, through the heart of villages. The Ogonis had almost nothing to show for the incredible wealth generated from beneath their soil.
At Mosop’s launch, Saro-Wiwa said he did not wish to be its president. He would leave that to the Ogoni “elite” — the traditional chiefs he feared would scuttle the movement if they were not given control. One of Ogoniland’s most prominent leaders and a former cabinet minister, Garrick Leton, was made president. Saro-Wiwa put himself up as spokesman. He was the most articulate among them, a renowned writer at home and well- connected abroad.
For two years, Mosop floundered in search of a means for the tiny Ogoni nation to press its claims for justice. Eventually, it focused on demanding that Shell pay compensation direct to the Ogonis or get off their land.
Mosop’s first major rally in January 1993 drew hordes. Saro-Wiwa thought Kobani among the most powerful of the speakers. “Edward was a real gem when he got to the podium. ‘Do not be afraid’, he urged the audience. ‘Nothing will happen to you on this land which God gave us!’ Great stuff, meant to convince everyone to confront the authorities and the oil companies bravely,” he wrote. Within six months, Saro- Wiwa was denouncing Kobani as a traitor.
Saro-Wiwa had rapidly grown frustrated with Mosop’s lack of progress. He suspected that Leton, the newly elected president of Mosop, was intent on quietly negotiated compromises with the military.
Leton, like Kobani and others in the Mosop steering committee, had served in the cabinet of the government of Rivers State, of which Ogoniland was a small part. “I’ve been in government since 1970. I’ve been state commissioner, I’ve been a federal minister, I’ve been a governor. I’ve been serving the Ogoni people since 1970 in different forms,” Leton said proudly.
To many poorer Ogonis, it was not so much a history of service as collaboration with the same military governments that were working hand-in-hand with Shell. Shell pays more than $900 000 a month into the Rivers State coffers alone, besides what goes to the national government. Money also changed hands for other reasons, usually called compensation or aid. Traditional chiefs and soldiers get their cut.
Saro-Wiwa favoured hitting the government and oil companies where it hurt: expel Shell and drive the military administration’s agents from Ogoniland. His call struck a chord with ordinary Ogonis.
But through the first months of 1993, Saro- Wiwa was heavily outnumbered at the top of Mosop and there appeared little chance he could gain direct control. So he bypassed his colleagues by building an alternative power base through a web of communal groups. The first-born was the National Youth Council of Ogoni People (Nycop).
Saro-Wiwa argued that it gave discipline and direction to militant young Ogonis. Others saw it as a private army that, in time, ran vigilante squads, kangaroo courts and even executions.
On the heels of Nycop came separate organisations for women, teachers, religious leaders, students and professionals. All were answerable to Saro-Wiwa. Leton was losing control. “Everybody who was a chairman or president of those organisations was controlled by him. This is where the trouble started, with these parallel organisations. He was doing things all on his own. He didn’t want us elders any longer,” Leton recalls.
When his time came, Edward Kobani died with the chant of “vulture, vulture” ringing in his ears. By then it had become the most damning and dangerous of epithets applied to those accused of betraying the Ogoni cause. It was first heard in April 1993, shortly after the Ogonis marched against a Shell contractor laying a new pipeline. Nigerian troops fired on the protesters, killing a man. The attack shook some Ogoni traditional leaders who saw their relations with the government, and Shell, threatened.
Ten Ogoni chiefs published a newspaper advert condemning “lawless activities”, apologising for the protest and demanding a military crackdown. The chiefs were promptly denounced by Nycop as “vultures”. Their homes were attacked and they fled from Ogoniland to “exile” in the sprawling Rivers State capital of Port Harcourt.
The incident was a coming of age for Nycop. At about the same time, Shell pulled out of Ogoniland saying its workers were increasingly threatened and in danger. Pumping stations were left on automatic and gas flares continued to burn. But no repairs were made, and new oil spills were left untouched.
The accusation of “vulture” caught on as a catch-all for those suspected of divided loyalties, particularly village chiefs who saw their authority diminished by the organised young men of Nycop. Some fled in fear. Those who remained were swallowed by another Saro- Wiwa creation, the Conference of Ogoni Traditional Rulers (Cotra), dominated by his loyalists. While Nycop kept a close eye on Ogoni loyalties, Cotra created an alternative court system to try those who deviated. Saro- Wiwa admitted it was out of hand when Cotra took to executing “witches”.
In mid-1993, Nigerians were anxiously awaiting the first presidential elections after 12 years of dictatorship. Vainly, Nigerians hoped military rule might be laid to rest. Saro-Wiwa wanted no part of the elections. He called on Ogonis to boycott the poll because neither of the two candidates addressed the issue of Ogoni autonomy.
Leton and Kobani were horrified. They argued that the best opportunity for the Ogonis was to back a candidate and hope to be rewarded. Saro-Wiwa mobilised his forces. He accused Leton and Kobani of betraying the Ogonis. Word spread that they had been bought off by the military and Shell. Ten days before the election, Nycop and the other organisations under Saro-Wiwa’s control pushed through approval for the boycott at a Mosop gathering.
Leton recognised defeat. He resigned. Edward Kobani followed, with a bitter attack on Nycop. “The establishment of a private army of storm-troopers bent on insulting, intimidating and marginalising the top leadership of the Ogoni nationality in Mosop can only create conflict and disunity,” his letter said.
Nycop ensured that the election boycott was successful, but it mattered little in the wider scheme of Nigerian politics. Within days, the military regime annulled the election and plunged the country into yet another prolonged crisis. Saro-Wiwa was appointed Mosop’s president.
Some time later a pamphlet appeared in Ogoniland. Under the headline “News Flash”, it carried a 15-point denunciation, accusing Shell of promising a $4,5-million payment to Ogoni “vultures” if they destroyed Mosop and Ken Saro-Wiwa, and further accusing Leton and Kobani of planning ways to share out the money.
Edward Kobani, who denied to the end accepting money from Shell, read the News Flash as a threat on his life. For the first time, he accused Saro-Wiwa of direct responsibility: “He has a formidable army of trained thugs who are terrorising the whole of Ogoniland, destroying the lives and property of those he does not like, in the attempt to emerge as the one Ogoni leader. The vile propaganda starts the process, to be followed by physical assault on the lives and property of his target victims.”
Three weeks later, Saro-Wiwa replied. “When will you accept responsibility for your failures? I cannot stop you from envying my achievements; I invite you to copy my ways and you will find that which you desire most: the Ken Saro-Wiwa image. Good advice. And it’s free.”
Resentment against the “vultures” was building up. Johnson Ntete-Nna, a Nycop official, raged against the traditional chiefs in a letter to a Nigerian newspaper. “In Ogoni, the elites are seen as men who drink beer, while others drink muddy water. There are the few who own cars, while others trek … These are the old big men who took the young men’s wives to bed, because they had money to jail the husbands when challenged … These are men whose main concerns are governmental contracts and positions,’ he wrote.
It was a popular sentiment, which found violent expression.
A fateful meeting attended by the Ogoni chiefs on May 21 1994, at the palace of the Chief of the Gokana district of Ogoniland, was to end in a massacre. The get-together had been disrupted by a young man on motorbike who revved its engine. Mohammed Kobani went outside to see what he wanted. “He said: ‘So it’s true that the vultures are meeting.’ He said Ken had said the vultures are sharing out money from Shell and the government.”
On that same day, Saro-Wiwa had been stopped by the police as he tried to enter Ogoniland to address a rally. His supporters were incensed. At his subsequent trial, the prosecution alleged that it was at the roadblock that Saro-Wiwa gave the order for the chiefs to be killed. No independent witness ever corroborated the accusation.
In any case, within the hour hundreds of people descended on the spartan breezeblock bungalow-cum-palace presided over by the Gokana chief. The denunciation of the “vultures” began. They were ordered from the palace.
Albert Badey and one of the Orage brothers were the first to step out. The blows rained down. Samuel Orage staggered back in, blood from his pierced eye flowing through his fingers. Badey fled to the market. He was given shelter by a woman until the mob threatened to burn down her home. His battered, half-naked corpse was dragged back to the palace door.
Samuel Orage was the mob’s next victim. “He was beaten to death right in that hall with clubs,” says Mohammed Kobani. “Then a man came to collect his brother, TB Orage.”
By mid-afternoon, three of the four chiefs were dead. Attention turned to the Kobani brothers. Edward fell under the blows. His brother, Mohammed dived into a shrine to the Spirit. As he cowered among goats heads, calabashes and empty boxes of aromatic schnapps, the machete-waving mob on his heels drew to an abrupt halt at the door.
Voices shouted at Kobani to come out. But none dared step across the threshold and offend the Spirit. At 6 o’clock that evening there was a gunshot in the air. The police had arrived. The mob fled.
A year later, Ken Saro-Wiwa was on trial for his life. Fourteen other Ogonis were charged with him. They were divided into two groups: those, including Saro-Wiwa, who were accused of organising the murders, and those charged with carrying out the killings. Saro-Wiwa had never even met most of the second group.
Nine of the 15 accused were convicted, Saro- Wiwa among them. His brother, Owens, blames military “agents provocateurs” for the murders, and accuses the families of the victims of accepting government money to damn Ken.
There are those — including one of Ken Saro-Wiwa’s own lawyers — who believe he carries moral responsibility for the murders. No credible witness ever heard him call anyone a “vulture”, let alone order their deaths. Saro-Wiwa said over and again that he opposed violence. Yet the climate in which the mob descended on the Gokana palace was created by the vilification of any and all who opposed Saro-Wiwa.
Another 19 Ogonis are awaiting trial for participation in the murders. The evidence against them appears as weak as against most of those already hanged. But the military has already achieved the real aim of the arrests and trials: to fuel conflict, division and chaos in Ogoniland. With Ken Saro-Wiwa and Mosop’s other leaders at one another’s throats, the military broke the most organised and effective political movement Nigeria has seen in many years.