GENOCIDE IN NIGERIA:
THE OGONI TRAGEDY* (Port Harcourt: Saros, 1992; 103 pp.)
Saro Wiwa
*Author's Note*
Writing this book has been one of the most painful experiences of my life. Ordinarily, writing a book is torture, a chore. But when, on ever page, following upon every word, every letter, a tragedy leaps up before the eyes of a write, he or she cannot derive that pleasure, that fulfillment in which the creative process often terminates.
What has probably worsened the matter is that I have lived through most of the period covered by this sordid story. I knew, as a child, that period from 1947 when the Ogoni saw, for a few brief years, the possibility of extricating themselves from the cruel fate which seems to have been ordained for them. I watched as they went into decline. I was privileged to play a role in the civil war which decimated them further and to assist in their rehabilitation at the end of that war.
Since then I have watched helplessly as they have been gradually ground to dust by the combined effort of the multinational oil company, Shell Petroleum Development Company, the murderous ethnic majority in Nigeria and the country's military dictatorships. Not the pleas, not the writing over the years have convinced the Nigerian elite that something special ought to be done to relieve the distress of the Ogoni.
I have known and argued earnestly since I was a lad of seventeen that the only way the Ogoni can survive is for them to exercise their political and economic rights. But because the Nigerian elite appear, on this particular matter, to have hearts of stone and the brains of millipedes; because Shell is a multinational company with the ability to crush whomever it wishes; because the petroleum resources of the Ogoni serve everyone's greed, all the doors seemed closed.
Three recent events have encouraged me to now place the issue before the world: the end of the cold War, the increasing attention being paid to the global environment, and the insistence of the European Community that minority rights be respected, albeit in the successor states to the Soviet Union and in Yugoslavia. What remains to be seen is whether Europe and America will apply in Nigeria the same standards which they have applied in Eastern Europe.
For what has happened and is happening to the Ogoni is strictly not the fault of the Nigerian elite and Shell Company alone; the international community has played a very significant role in it. If the Americans did not purchase Nigerian oil, the Nigerian nation would not be, nor would the oppressive ethnic majority in the country have the wherewithal to pursue its genocidal intentions. Indeed, there is a sense in which the "Nigerian" oil which the Americans, Europeans and Japanese buy is stolen property: it has been seized from its owners by force of arms and has not been paid for. Therefore, these buyers are receiving stolen property. Also, it is Western investment and technology which keep the Nigerian oil industry and therefore the Nigerian nation alive, oil being 94 percent of Nigeria's Gross Domestic Product.
Also, European and American shareholders in multi-national oil companies and manufacturers of oil mining equipment have benefited from the purloining of Ogoni resources, the devastation of the Ogoni environment and the genocide of the Ogoni people. Thus, shareholders in the multi-national oil companies -both Shell and Chevron -which prospect for oil in Ogoni, the American, Japanese and European governments, and the multinational oil companies have a moral if not legal responsibility for ending the genocide of the Ogoni people and the complete devastations of their environment, if, indeed, that is still possible.
The requirement is enormous and urgent. The Ogoni people themselves including their children are determined to save whatever is left of their rich heritage. The international community can support this determination by championing the drive of the Ogoni for autonomy within Nigeria. The restoration of their rights, political, economic and environmental does not, cannot, hurt anyone. It will only place the responsibility for ending this dreadful situation where it should lie: on the Ogoni people themselves. The area being rich in resources and the people resourceful, the Ogoni will be able to sort out their problem in time.
Secondly, the international community must prevail on Shell and Chevron which prospect for oil in Ogoni, and the Nigerian Government which abets them, to stop flaring gas in the area immediately.
Thirdly, the international community can help by sending experts -medical, environmental and agricultural -to assist the Ogoni people restore a semblance of normality to Ogoni territory.
In the early years of this century, a French writer, Andre Gide, toured the Congo and observed the gross abuse of human rights being perpetrated in that country by King Leopold II of Belgium and his agents. He wrote about it and Europeans were sufficiently shocked to end the abuses.
I write now in the hope that the international community will, in similar fashion, do something to mitigate the Ogoni tragedy. It is bad enough that it is happening a few years into [before?] the twenty-first century. It will be a disgrace to humanity should it persist one day longer.
I expect the ethnic majority of Nigeria to turn the heat of their well-known vindictiveness on me for writing this book. I defy them to do so.
Some may wonder at my use of the word "genocide" to describe what has happened to the Ogoni people. The United Nations defines genocide as "the commission of acts with intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group." If anyone, after reading this book, has any further doubt of, or has a better description for, the crime against the Ogoni people, I will be happy to know it.
I wish to thank Barika Idamkue and Dr. Sonpie Kpone-Tonwe for kindly reading the manuscript and making valuable suggestions for improving the work; and my assistant, Hyacinth Wayi, for speedy word-processing.
All errors in the book are mine and I accept full responsibility for them.
Ken Saro-Wiwa Port Harcourt, 1992