Angella Johnson
How do you live with the knowledge that your father’s last thoughts on the way to the gallows might have been, ”If only my son had done more to save me”?
Ken Wiwa’s eyes darken with pain as he shares this recurring nightmare, which is fuelled by guilt that he could not prevent the Nigerian military regime from killing acclaimed writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa.
That was two years ago. The execution was defiantly carried out during the last Commonwealth heads of government meeting in New Zealand while Wiwa (he changed his name a few years ago to avoid being called Saro- Wiwa junior) was frantically trying to persuade international governments to stop it.
Over the past week he has been lobbying them again. It’s like dj vu: same summit meeting, same issues. Only this time the venue is the Scottish city of Edinburgh and his father is already dead. ”But we want his body so that we can give him a proper burial,” he says.
When Saro-Wiwa was arrested in 1993 for murder, Wiwa became an unofficial envoy, travelling the world to spread his father’s message about the Ogoni people, Shell and Nigerian human rights abuses.
World leaders queued up to shake his hand and offer platitudes. An unwordly young man with aspirations to become a journalist, Wiwa found doors opened to him by the likes of United States Vice-President Al Gore, former United Nations secretary general Boutros Boutros-Ghali and prime ministers across the globe.
It was all a cynical act of political convenience by players who know the power of appearances. ”They just wanted to be photographed with me, to make it look as if they were really doing something. But in reality they were too cowardly to act against Nigeria because of the oil.”
It has been a steep learning curve for Wiwa. ”It was an eye-opener, and that’s putting it mildly,” he sighed. ”I, however, realised that I didn’t want to go into politics – it’s far too duplicitous.”
But Wiwa was in Edinburgh trying to get the same cynical politicians to levy tough sanctions against the Nigerian junta for its failure to restore democracy. ”We want to expose the hypocrisy here. Maybe we can shame them into action.”
Wiwa and other Nigerian activists were hoping the summit would sanction an independent inquiry to go to Ogoni and find out who was responsible for the murders Saro-Wiwa was condemned for, and the estimated further 3 000 locals who have been killed throughout the crisis.
They also wanted to see the end of the military occupation of Ogoni and asylum for the refugees who had fled to West Africa, including members of the Saro-Wiwa family.
Most importantly, Wiwa wanted pressure to be brought on the Nigerian government to clear his father’s name, retrieve the body from an unmarked grave and give him a proper resting place. He failed on all counts.
But he certainly tried his best to shock the Commonwealth leaders into action. He points to a coil of heavy industrial rope lying at his feet, which the campaign group brought to Edinburgh for a publicity stunt. They had planned to erect makeshift gallows outside the conference centre. But it didn’t happen.