Saro-Wiwa’s detention diary: A Month and A Aday (1995) made bare some of the tragic events that preceded the Hero’s death. Saro-Wiwa had led the Ogoni cause and it was for that cause that he formed MOSOP, that is Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People.
MOSOP’s main aim was to cause Shell to take responsibility for its damaging actions and for the military regime of the time to begin to invest in the region that provides the resources used in developing the other areas of the country. That this simple demand will be met with all the viciousness that a military leader and a cunning multinational can muster is an event that is certain. For even though the military government of Babangida was armed with decrees, laws, and lawlessness in equal measure, it still lived in fear, fear of exposure, fear of being questioned by other international bodies (and that’s what Saro-Wiwa wants and that’s what a military government who had assumed power through a coup d’état abhors), fear of losing favour with the West.
Shell – as a multinational – fears were that of image, damages, and penalties that await them at a court of law and consumer satisfaction. Finally, such marriages – between corrupt governments and nefarious corporations – fear the most an individual armed with the pen, the truth and an intransigent singular purpose; an individual impervious to bribery, collusion and connivance to rob the destitute of his singular meal.
Hence, the two love birds resorted to illegalities – one by force arrest and false charges and the other through character assassination, bribery and connivance – with the sole aim of discrediting him. The opportunity came for them to act when after the failed election of 1993 several fracases erupted in several areas and communities and Ken Saro-Wiwa was arrested on a charge that was not disclosed to him until later. He was moved around the country from one prison custody to the other and even though his health status was deteriorating and in need of assistance, help was hardly provided. He was finally charged with the murder of some Ogoni chiefs and was sentenced to death by hanging in 1995 by a kangaroo military court that offered him no chance to defend himself or appeal and was summarily executed. Before his conviction and sentence, Shell – having been accused of working with the government to cancel out the threats Saro-Wiwa poses to their exploration, exploitation and spillage in Nigeria – released the following message which was shared with Wole Soyinka, and which he talked about in his book You Must Set Forth at Dawn, by Ken Wiwa (Saro-Wiwa’s son):
If anything untoward happened to the Ogoni Nine … others were to blame – the agitators whose aggressive tactics only hardened the mood the military regime and undid all the careful work of the silent diplomacy being undertaken by their company, and well-meaning others. [Page xii]
Shell showed their complicity in this sentence, having already held secret meetings on strategies to neutralise Saro-Wiwa who was lucky to have received outcomes from some of these meetings. Thus, instead of correcting the problem, Shell with the military government decided to eliminate the man. The cancellation of the election results coupled with the relentless power struggle in government saw General Sani Abacha take over power from General Ibrahim Babangida whilst the latter was on a visit to Egypt. It was therefore Sani Abacha who oversaw the execution of the death sentence, having already assured the international community and presidents, including Nelson Mandela who claimed the Abacha had personally him, that nothing untoward was going to happen to the Ogoni Nine.
If there is anything that this book shows, it shows that it wasn’t the combined power of Abacha-cum-Babangida and Shell that destroyed Saro-Wiwa; Saro-Wiwa’s death was caused by four different groups of Nigerians who knowingly or unknowingly added their voice and strength to the draconian measures that had been set into motion by the two.
The first group is the people of Nigeria who were not directly affected by the destruction and havoc being wreaked on the Ogoni people and whose silence encouraged the government. This group of people by their silence gave meaning, substance and backing to the evil that was being perpetrated against this man and the other eight Ogoni people. For them since they will not be the direct beneficiaries should Ogoni win, there was no way they should be the direct victims of any crackdown that was sure to arise from showing their support to the accused. Remaining neutral they confirmed what Desmond Tutu said that:
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.
The second group who worked in complicit with the government to persecute Saro-Wiwa was individual Ogoni denizens. These individuals like Dr Leton, Edward Kobani, Dr Birabi, Albert Bodey, seeking their parochial interest accepted financial and positional bribes and promises to sell out their participation in the Ogoni cause. Wanting to be part of the government, to harvest some of the trappings of power, they abjured their links and worked against Saro-Wiwa. Members of this group went a long way to challenge the position of Saro-Wiwa as the leader or spokesperson of the Ogoni people; they countered every move he made to ensure his failure and their success.
The third group is the civil servants (lawyers, policemen, military men, doctors, judges) who through that universal anthem of justification – ‘I’m only doing my work’ – ensured that he was arrested, mentally tortured, neglected, falsely charged, poorly defended, and hanged. This group to show their impotence pretended to pity him when in custody. Some will go a long to offer such ‘services’ they described to be a prohibition for a person in custody to have, to show their solidarity with him. Yet ‘in doing their work’ they ensured the implementation of the death-sentence of an innocent man whose only work was to ask why. Saro-Wiwa bitterly wrote about that female judge who charged him falsely and the likes of Mr Inah and Ada George. What does one do when the officers of the law who have sworn to protect the law subvert the law? What does one do when they turn this law to commit crimes against humanity and against the spirit of the law? This group of people only have temporary relief for their conscience do forever haunts them. This is a poem Saro-Wiwa wrote, titled The True Prison, to describe those who sold their conscience:
It is not the leaking roof
Nor the singing mosquitoes
In the damp, wretched cell.
It is not the clank of the key
As the warder locks you in.
It is not the measly rations
Unfit for man or beast
…
It is the lies that have been drummed
Into your ears for one generation
It is the security agent running amok
Executing callous calamitous orders
In exchange for a wretched meal a day
The magistrate writing in her book
Punishment she knows is undeserved
The moral decrepitude
Mental ineptitude
Lending dictatorship spurious legitimacy
Cowardice masked as obedience
Lurking in denigrated souls
It is fear damping trousers
We dare not wash off our urine
It is this
….
Dear friend, turns our free world
Into a dreary prison. [Page 156]
The fourth group are international groups and leaders of countries who either refused to speak publicly against Abacha’s regime or spoke feebly against it or even spoke strongly against it whilst patting its back in camera for fear of losing oil supply. Was all that could have been done to ensure a fair trial done? Is it coincidence that ‘access to oil’ is a pun of ‘axis of evil’?
In the light of this, it is sad to read of Babangida still commenting and dreaming of the presidency in Nigeria. This book is an interesting book and it will show you the levels of human wickedness. My only problem with the book is that the other eight individuals were hardly mentioned or talked about and there could be reasons for this. It could be that Ken Saro-Wiwa initially did not know all the people who have been arrested and got to know of this when they were charged with murder, the trial of which is not recorded in the boo. Or it could also be that as a memoir, Saro-Wiwa wanted to speak for himself. Regardless of this, the wickedness of man against man, of black oppression upon black folks, in some way reminds me of The Book Thief. A Month and a Day & Letters is Highly recommended. You can also read my poem – Echoes in a Dying Head – written for him.
This article is a republication as part of our Nov. 10th special editions to remember Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni8
