Several heroes have been allegedly killed at different times for different reasons in Nigeria. Reports showed that while Nigeria’s government had been accused for being responsible for certain incidents, others had been bolted around religious intolerance, sectarian violence, political differences among others.
Next month, Nigerians, especially writers, would remember to mourn the late author of ***Sozaboy: A Novel in Rotten English*** and environmental activist, Kenule Saro-Wiwa and the eight other Ogoni, who were hanged 18 years ago, precisely on November 10, 1995 by the government of the late Sani Abacha.
Saro-Wiwa, who would have clocked 71 years on Wednesday, October 10, was executed for leading an anti-government campaign against environmental degradation of the land and waters of Ogoniland by the operations of the multinational petroleum industry, especially the Royal Dutch Shell Company.
Media records established that at the peak of the campaign, described as ‘non-violent’, in certain reports, Saro-Wiwa was arrested, tried by a special military tribunal, and hanged on charges described as “entirely politically motivated and completely unfounded.”
Reports have it that his execution provoked international outrage and resulted in Nigeria’s suspension from the Commonwealth of Nations for over three years.
His best known novel, ***Sozaboy: A Novel in Rotten English***, tells the story of a naive village boy recruited to the army during the Nigerian Civil War of 1967 to 1970, and intimates the political corruption and patronage in Nigeria’s military regime of the time.
Saro-Wiwa’s war diaries, On a Darkling Plain, document his experience during the war. He was also described as a successful businessman and television producer. For instance, his satirical television series, Basi and Co., was wildly popular, with an estimated audience of 30 million Nigerians.
There have been reported instances of some writers, predicting their death. The case of Saro-Wiwa appeared to have joined the archive of such legends. In his satirical piece, ***Africa Kills Her Sun*** first published in 1989, Saro-Wiwa in a resigned, melancholic mood foreshadowed his own execution, which came to pass six years later.
His widow, Mrs. Maria Saro-Wiwa, in July 2012, at the flag-off ceremony of President Jonathan’s Bring Back the Book initiative, Bayelsa state edition at Yenagoa, said she would forever remember her husband for his love for books.
“Saro-Wiwa is a great lover of book and a voracious reader. The future of Nigeria will depend on how much we invest now. We get ideas from books. Idea is what inspires us to achieve our hope. In the beginning was the word and that word is in the book. It is a source of comfort to me and my family that my husband is being remembered in books.”
According to a number of critics, though Saro-Wiwa’s ambition, to fight for the freedom of his people from what he referred to as ‘untold hardship and oppression’, was short-lived, the imprint appears to be speaking louder. From the grave, according to a poet, “he is singing a new tune of freedom song per day for the Ogoni.”
To immortalise the great works of this writer, several authors have made attempts to publish books on his career and achievements. Among such authors was the former managing director, Daily Times, Adinoyi Ojo Onukaba. He was one of the three shortlists for the 2010 edition of the Nigeria Prize for Literature(NPL) with his book, The Killing Swamp.
In an interview with the writer of this piece at Eko Hotel and Suites, Lagos, before the final declaration of the winner of the prize in October 2010, he said his book was about the last hours of the late gem, his career and principle.
“The play is a fictional account of the last hours of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the eight other Ogoni activists that were killed in 1995 but the play is not just about Ken Saro-Wiwa’s last hours alone, it is also about the situation in the Niger Delta and how the region has been turned into a killing field or a killing swamp. Swamp, of course, is because of the environment in that place and I am looking at the years of neglect of the Niger Delta, neglect of course by successive Nigerian governments, the environmentally hostile or unfriendly action by the oil companies operating in the region. It is the way that the Niger Delta has been turned into a theatre of war that is at the core of this work. I have tried not to apportion blames and tried not to write about some good guys and some bad guys but to look at all the actors in the Niger Delta, especially the inhabitants as victims of this criminal neglect by the Nigerian government, victims of the environmentally-harmful policies or actions of the oil companies that are operating in the region. It is a combination of these two: the neglect and marginalisation of the people by the Nigerian government and the environmentally-harmful activities of the oil companies working there, that propelled the turning of the region into the killing field or Killing Swamp and that is the process of giving the play that title,” he said.
A literary critic described Onukaba’s book as “a comprehensive story of a warrior that was captured for sacrifice in the noon day.”
Describing his passion for writing the book, Onukaba said the setting and the plot of the story were mirror images of the reality.
“I did not set out to write a Niger Delta story. I had a personal encounter with Ken Saro-Wiwa. Before I travelled out of this country, I was doing a book, the biography of a Nigerian leader and his name was given to me as one I should meet because he was a good friend of the person. So I went to see him and we immediately hit it off. He commended me, because he used to read me in The Guardian. Just before the interview started, he wanted to know which school I attended. I thought he meant the university and I said the University of Ibadan but he said ‘your secondary school,’ to which I answered Lennon Memorial College. He said ‘what is that’ as I said, ‘the school I attended.’ He kept quiet for sometime and said: ‘I am surprised that people like you come from these backwater schools and you would be rubbing shoulders with some of us who went to the best schools in the country.’ He graduated, I think from one of the old Government Colleges and I guess people from there, Kings’ College and all these elite schools always have this arrogance around them. So he was shocked that I did not attend any of those schools and I had began to excel in what I was doing and he even took notice of me. I wasn’t offended but I formed an opinion of him there and then, as somebody who was full of himself; who was supremely confident. That was the first and last encounter I had with him.
“When I left the country, I wasn’t paying much attention to the crisis in the Niger Delta. Then, there was this development because it was reported in the newspaper in New York that a court has sentenced a writer to death and lo and behold, it was this same Saro-Wiwa. Before I knew what was happening, I picked up a copy of the New York Timesone day and on the front page, there was this headline: Nigeria hangs writer, eight others. My friend started calling me, asking what was wrong and why my country was killing writers and that was when the idea of writing this play actually came from. I had been working on it in my brain for a very long time until in 2009 when I began to put it down. It is my own way of dealing with the best of this person who I believe was a friend and in that brief moment that I was with him, he had become a very good friend of mine. I could imagine what was going on between him and the people who had come to kill him and it is not just a fictional account of the incident. I have also tried to explore the larger issue of the Niger Delta and the kind of environment that has been created with the killing; not just of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the eight others and not just about the four chiefs; pro-government chiefs that were allegedly killed by forces loyal to Ken Saro-Wiwa and others, but of the killing that has been going on.
“Killings, perhaps, arising from environmental degradation, killings arising from the loss of livelihood by the people whose water and farmlands have been polluted and all the other things that have been happening in the region as regards environmental issues,” he said.
Born in Ihima, Kogi State on March 9, 1960, the author, Onukaba, graduated from the University of Ibadan with B.A. (Hons) in Theatre Arts in 1982. He was one of the pioneer reporters of The Guardian in 1983.
Left for the United States of America (USA) in 1989, for a Masters degree in Journalism, he had his Ph.D in Performance Studies at the New York University where he was retained to lecture for awhile.
The playwright, Onukaba, served in New York, Somalia, Kenya and Iraq before his return back home in 1999 to work as spokesperson to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar.
Initially, he left this assignment for Lagos to manage Daily Times but later went back to work with Atiku as Senior Adviser on Media.
*This article is a republication as part of our Nov. 10th special editions to remember Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni8
