Nov. 10th Special: Saro-Wiwa’s Complete Statement to the Ogoni Special Military Tribunal in 1995 (Part 5)

Continued from Part 4.

THE NDOKI BORDER

On Easter Day, in April of 1994, Nigerian troops struck Ogoni on its northern borders. Information gathered from the troops who carried out the attack are that a security report was sent to Abuja to the effect that 10,000 armed Ogoni youths (always the magical number) were on their way to attack the Afam Power Station which is on Ogoni soil. Abuja had no difficulty in confirming Lt.-Col. Komo’s orders to the Internal Security Task Force to destroy all the Ogoni villages in the area. Between the 3rd and 15th of April, over 800 Ogoni men, women and children were massacred and six villages completely flattened. Women and children were raped and the villages were looted before they were burnt down. Wrote a Catholic nun who was resident in the area, “The military are busy flattening anything left standing on the 9th (of April, 1994) in the six villages and are taking up residence there to eat the goats and crops.”

WASTING OPERATIONS

The eastern border of Ogoni was not easy to tackle in this same deceptive fashion. No ready excuse (e.g. land disputes between individual Ogoni and the neighbouring Ibibio) could be found in order to engineer another “Communal Clash”. So the Internal Security Task Force Commander recommended creating internal dissension among the Ogoni as a ruse for invading all of Ogoni and carrying out “wasting operations”. In a 12th May, 1994 memorandum to Lt.-Col. Komo, Major Paul Okuntimo, after noting that division between the elitist Ogoni leadership exist, recommended: intra-communal/kingdom formulae alternative as discussed to apply. Wasting operations during MOSOP and OTHER (emphasis mine) gatherings making constant military presence justifiable. Wasting targets cutting across communities and leadership cadres especially vocal individuals of various groups.

This amazing memorandum is a confirmation of the genocidal intentions and plans laid by the Nigerian military dictatorship against the Ogoni people. The fact that it was actually carried out is even more blood-chilling.

Shell’s interest in the plan is clearly indicated in the memorandum although the Company will, as usual, deny it publicly.

A proposal by the Police dated April 21 to inundate Ogoni with policeman along with other arms of the Armed Forces in order to “restore and maintain law and order” and “to ensure that ordinary law abiding citizens of the area, non-indigenous residents or carrying out business ventures or schooling within Ogoniland (sic) are not molested” and “to re-establish government presence in the area so as to bring to the knowledge of the citizenry that they are still part and parcel of Nigeria” was leaked to MOSOP indicating that there was competition between the various arms of the security forces for the huge sums of money, to be supplied by Shell, that were being spent on destroying the Ogoni. Made public by MOSOP and protested by foreign and local opinion, the Police were excluded from the lethal “wasting operations” hatched by Major (as he then was) Okuntimo and Lt.-Col. Komo in early May.

MOSOP’S WAYS OF PEACE AND DIALOGUE

While these cruel plans were actually being hatched and implemented, MOSOP was working for peace. Hoodlums in Ogoni were being handed over to the security agencies. MOSOP was co-operating with the federal-government owned Nigerian Gas Company to ensure that plans to lay a gas pipeline through Ogoni territory were carried out under the law, and that the Ogoni voice was heard at the National Constitutional Conference which was expected to commence in June 1994.

MURDER, MAYHEM

As the Ogoni planned peace and dialogue, Shell and the Nigerian military plotted death and destruction.

The elections to the National Constitutional Conference proved to be the occasion the conspirators were waiting for. Again, the plan was to provoke the Ogoni people and find occasion to visit mayhem on them. Consequently, I was stopped by armed troops from explaining to the Ogoni people why they had to be represented at the Conference. This was totally unprecedented, high-handed and illegal. At the same time, the Gokana Council of Chiefs was allowed to hold a campaign meeting. Ogoni had been inundated with security agents on the day, the 21st of May, 1994 yet none of them was asked to secure the campaign meeting attended by, among others, those who had, a week earlier, on the 14th of May 1994 called upon a section of the Ogoni people (the Gokana) to abandon MOSOP and to allow the resumption of oil activities in the area. They also asked for troops to be drafted into the area. They had been left in no doubt that the masses were opposed to all such betrayal of the people by a spontaneous peaceful protest march staged in the area on the 15th of May, 1994.

GIONKOO MURDERS

On 21st May, 1994, a mob was said to have set upon four prominent Ogoni men at Gionkoo in Gokana on the day and brutally murdered them. Two of the murdered men were my in-laws. The other two were my very close friends. The police were not allowed to investigate these murders, the Internal Security Task Force being ordered by Lt.-Col. Komo that very day, to round up leading members of MOSOP whom he accused, very strangely, of having committed the barbaric murders. Lt-Col Komo’s intent was not in doubt. It was the total destruction of the Ogoni people: genocide.

This case of homicide was the pretext for the Internal Security Task Force to invade every single Ogoni village and to loot, rape, burn and kill unarmed men, women and children. The Commander of the Task Force, Lt.-Col. Okuntimo has himself publicly confessed to these crimes.

At a press conference broadcast by the Nigerian Television Authority, he described his involvement in Ogoni after the May 1994 murders as “psychological warfare” intended to facilitate constructive dialogue. He gave the following account of the actions of his forces during the first three days of the operation:

The first three days, the first three days of the operation. I operated in the night. Nobody knew where I was coming from. What I will just do is that I will just take some detachments of soldiers, they will just stay at four corners of the town. They…have automatic rifle(s) that sound death. If you hear the sound you will freeze. And then I will equally now choose about twenty (soldiers) and give them … grenades — explosives — very hard one(s). So we shall surround the town at night… The machine gun with five hundred rounds will open up. When four or five like that open up and then we are throwing grenades and they are making “eekpuwaa!” what do you think the people are going to do? And we have already put roadblock(s) on the main road, we don’t want anybody to start running … so the option we made was that we should drive all these boys, all these people into the bush with nothing except the pant(s) and the wrapper they are using that night.

Hundreds of Ogoni men, women and children were shot by the Nigerian troops in cold blood; many were maimed, and hundreds of thousands were driven into the bush. Money was extorted from the over six hundred men who were detained and tortured in special detention centres established for the purpose at Kpor and Bori, and as yet unspecified number of Ogoni people were driven out of government and private sector employment. Many houses were destroyed and a lot of private property looted. Villages were forced to pay protection money in order to escape Major (as he then was) Okuntimo. Human Rights Watch/Africa have given a full report of the brutalities committed against the Ogoni people in this war of genocide.

For organizing these “wasting operations”, this genocide, neither Major Okuntimo nor Lt.-Col. Komo was chastised. The Nigerian Army subsequently promoted Major Okuntimo to the rank of Lt.-Colonel and Lt.-Col. Komo continues to act as Military Administrator of Rivers State and executioner of the Ogoni.

GOVERNMENT & SHELL PROPAGANDA

The crime of the Ogoni people is that they had the temerity to ask for their rights from both the government of Nigeria and Shell. The punishment for this crime has been genocidal attacks on the Ogoni. To justify genocide, it has suited the Nigerian government to put it to the world that the Ogoni and MOSOP have organized violence. Enormous sums of money have been spent on this propaganda. But the method is well known. It is the case of the lion and the sheep of Aesop’s fable. And it will not wash.

Lt.-Colonel Komo’s cohorts have not captured a single rifle in Ogoni in the two years of their sojourn there. Bribing a few Ogoni politicians who have sold their conscience for a mess of pottage to join the government in putting it out that the Ogoni struggle is violent and that MOSOP is a violent organization, is cheap blackmail.

From the very beginning, I have made it a point of duty to brief the diplomatic community in Nigeria on the aims and methods of MOSOP. Accordingly, several diplomats visited Ogoni on their own, observed MOSOP rallies, spoke to MOSOP activists and other Ogoni people and were able to form independent conclusions. It is not therefore surprising that MOSOP has earned the rare distinction (for Nigeria) of being honoured with the 1994 Right Livelihood Award, often described as the “alternative Nobel”. And Professor Claude Ake, distinguished social scientist and winner of the Nigerian National Merit Award, has said of MOSOP and Ogoni:

For better or for worse, MOSOP and Ogoniland (sic) are the conscience of this country. They have risen above our slave culture of silence; they have found the courage to be free and they have evolved a political consciousness which denies power to rogues, hypocrites, fools and bullies. For better or for worse, Ogoniland (sic) carries our hopes. Battered and bleeding, it struggles on to realize our promise and to restore our dignity. If it falters, we die.

AMEN!

OGONI ON TRIAL

Not satisfied with its “wasting operations” in Ogoni, the slick alliance of Shell and the Nigerian military dictatorship have mounted a campaign of calumny against my person in major centres of the world. Nigerian embassies in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Belgium, the United States and elsewhere have asserted that there is or has been a “Saro-Wiwa Militant Movement” and all such beasts engaged in acts of violence in Ogoni. Fictitious hijacks of planes and kidnapping of influential Nigerians have been hung on the neck of MOSOP. The alliance have gone even further, detaining and torturing me for seven months during which I was held incommunicado, chained, denied medical attention and starved before arraigning me and Ledum Mitee and other Ogonis on charges of murder of which we are completely innocent before this Special Military Tribunal whose rulings and methods have been condemned worldwide.

What the criminal partners of the alliance are trying to tell the world by this arraignment is that the black man, even the best of them, is no better than a criminal. For, if a man of my upbringing, education, cultivation and demonstrated achievement in various areas of life cannot conduct an argument for rights peacefully and in a civilized manner, then no one else can do so. Nor am I so daft as to confront two brutal enemies with the weapon which they wield best but which I lack the resources, inclination or temperament to procure: arms.

This is not the end of this statement.  Due to the length of the statement, we have decided to publish it in series.  Part 6 (which is the final part of the statement) will be published tomorrow.  Please keep an eye on this page.

OGONI HEROES’ DAY: CALL FOR ARTICLE SUBMISSION!!!