The Niger Delta’s Ogoni minority will mark the 10th anniversary of the execution of their champion Ken Saro-Wiwa on Thursday, amid anger that so little here has changed since his death shocked the world.
Saro-Wiwa and eight of his comrades were hanged on November 10 1995 by Nigeria’s then military regime after a controversial trial in which the writer and activist was accused of ordering the murders of four prominent Ogonis.
The executions sparked international condemnation — Nigeria was kicked out of the Commonwealth — and most Ogonis still believe that Saro-Wiwa was framed because he was opposed to the government and the Anglo-Dutch oil giant Shell.
Ogoniland is a tract of densely inhabited forest and farmland lying along the fringes of the Niger Delta wetlands north and east of the oil city of Port Harcourt. It is home to massive and proven oil and gas reserves.
Shell owns the rights to pump Ogoni oil and was already earning large revenues from the territory in the early 1990s when Saro-Wiwa’s Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (Mosop) began to mount protests.
Mosop argued that Ogoni farmland and fishing areas were being damaged by Shell’s pollution and that the industry’s profits were not being shared with local communities. The military reacted with savage punishment raids.
Shell has always insisted it had nothing to do with the decision to try Saro-Wiwa, but in the face of local anger and an international consumer boycott it had already shut down its Ogoni operations when the executions took place.
‘The struggle continues’
Ten years on, idle oil wells are gathering dust and pipelines are being dug up by scrap-metal looters, but life in Ogoni remains tough and this week’s events to mark Saro-Wiwa’s death have been marked by anger and determination.
”The struggle continues! The struggle continues! The struggle continues!” cried the Anglican bishop of Ogoniland, the Right Reverend Solomon Gberegbara, at a Saro-Wiwa memorial service on Sunday in his home town of Bori.
Nigeria returned to civilian rule in 1999 but — while Ogoniland has been spared much of the violence that has raged elsewhere in the delta in recent years — Saro-Wiwa’s people remain politically weak and mired in poverty.
Many of the villages that had once hoped to become the hubs of an oil-rich autonomous ethnic region are now poverty-stricken backwaters of mud-brick homes whose bitter owners have no running water or mains electricity.
”I’ve been away for 10 years. I don’t think anything much has improved. The only thing that has changed is that I can talk to you,” Blessing Kpuinen told reporters after returning to Bori from life as a refugee in the United States.
Blessing’s husband, John Kpuinen, was one of the eight Ogoni leaders executed alongside Saro-Wiwa. She returned this week to hold a burial service for him after the federal government belatedly confirmed the location of his remains.
Along with members of Saro-Wiwa’s relatives, many of whom also live abroad, she admitted that President Olusegun Obasanjo’s civilian regime has ended much of the violent persecution that had blighted Ogoni under the military.
But she called on Nigeria’s new leadership — which is today drawn from the same elite that grew wealthy under former dictatorships — to use the occasion of the anniversary to make amends.
”They killed my husband for something he knew nothing about. I think there should be justice. They should clear their names,” she said.
Shell, which has taken tentative steps towards reconciliation with the Ogonis by accepting a government-appointed mediator, also has a long way to go before it finds forgiveness.
Angry village chieftains insist that the firm must pay compensation for oil already pumped before the protests and then give up its claim on what remains.
”If another company wanted to pump oil, we could negotiate with them,” suggested chief Neesae Neemene, of Nyowii village. — Sapa-AFP