Remembering Ken Saro Wiwa

Remembering Ken Saro-Wiwa

“Well, the only trouble is that there is trouble” -Ken Saro-Wiwa, in his novel, SOZABOY (1985), p.17.

Monday is November 10, and we cannot help relieving a most ungodly mission executed by some hell-bound hangmen in Port Harcourt during late General Sani Abach’s blood-stained reign some eight years ago. Also, maybe, having had a whole eight years to look at the event more coolly and dispassionately, we may at least try now and rise above the unavoidable emotions that grossly attended the event in 1995 and place the flurry of activities that preceded the judicial murder in their proper perspective. This is most needful because, as Chinua Achebe rightly observed in his book of essays, Morning Yet On Creation Day (1975), “if we are to survive as a nation we need to grasp the meaning of our tragedy.”

Now, I have tried to draw parallels between the hanging of Mr. Ken Saro-Wiwa and the one that took place in Herman Melville’s novel, Billy Budd. Indeed, like Billy Budd, Ken appeared to have deployed enormous trust on people whose motives were less than noble. But while in Billy Budd we see a clear case of innocence and undue naïvety before the vile serpent of envy and jealousy, Brother Ken fell victim to a most ungodly league between a Godless dictator and an implacable oil clique. But his case was equally worsened by an unprecedented global and local “support” and media blitz, coupled with an unfortunate underestimation and under-appreciation of the grand forces that were at play in the Ogoni phenomenon. Indeed, the latter ensured the brilliant revolutionary had little or no time to pause and ponder why indeed it was at that particular time in Nigeria’s embittered history that everyone seemed to have become an Ogoni-maniac.

At a time it became really very difficult to clearly ascertain what the Ogonis actually wanted. There were too many voices articulating the Ogoni cause from several countries and in several languages. The indulging and over-bearing voices of their many “friends” were rather too impatient and too desperate to let the Ogonis move at their own pace and articulate coherently their demands themselves. In short, while the Ogonis savoured the sudden and overwhelming global limelight they had suddenly been thrust into, their legitimate struggle was quietly hijacked. Unfortunately, that is!

The ordinary Ogoni man and woman is the worst hit. Their valid cases of deprivations and sufferings have hung medals on several foreign and local necks and swelled various wallets around world. Now that Ogoni seems to have significantly lost its profitability to the amorphous pack called the “International Community”, their still pitiable plight now hardly manages to get footnote mentions in world discourse. And the fact that many of them are yet to realise this is the real tragedy.

As we mark the eight anniversary of Ken’s murder this Monday, my heart goes out for Ogoni, this wasteland and open sore of a heartless and irremediably unfeeling nation. In Ogoni, poverty and misery walk on four legs. But just underneath, in this land of crushing poverty, is the black gold that has enriched nations, built skyscrapers in choice cities, crowned and enriched kings and queens. But the question is: why was this ‘global’ gallant fight on behalf of the Ogonis never extended to the very spots where they would have made the most beneficial impacts, namely, the operational headquarters of these multi-national oil companies in New York, London, Paris, etc,? Indeed many of these “activists” and “experts” from distant lands actually share kinships, friendships and partnerships with these oppressive environmental degraders whose mere Milking Outposts they come all the way to Nigeria to ‘fight.’ But when they are safely away from Nigeria and the Niger Delta, the party resumes in earnest, and every affected recrimination and fiery speeches is hurriedly forgiven and forgotten, having been jettisoned in Nigeria some thousands of miles away.

Before the 1995 Ogoni tragedies, the tempo of activities was so heightened that many of us in Port Harcourt were actually wondering with bated breath where all the frenzied activities would lead to. And all of a sudden, the killing of the Ogoni Four exploded on the nation. No doubt, the brutal killings of Mr. Badey, Chief Kobani and the two Orage brothers, dealt an awesome blow on Ogoniland. And the foreign and a section of the Nigerian media did not help matters when they continued to dare the clearly insane government of Gen. Abacha, and to polarize Ogoni with their biased reports.

Abacha then cashed in on the ensuing disunity in Ogoniland and went for his pound of flesh. (The Ogoni Four enjoyed widespread sympathy, and Badey’s son reportedly described the hanging of Ken as a sign of justice having been done!). Ken and his eight kinsmen were arraigned before Justice Auta’s Tribunal for murder and were sentenced to death by hanging on October 30 and 31, 1995. Ten days later, the sentence was executed. And with that Ogoni lost thirteen sons! Indeed, this may have added more fire-power to the verbal cannons of the self-serving activists, but where did it leave the Ogoni people whose usually beautiful daughters were allegedly abused and raped in broad daylight, and whose sons were mowed down by Abacha’s soldiers sent into Ogoni later to “keep peace?”

Indeed, Ogoni was only a victim of time. They had been crying all the while but few listened. Then suddenly, Ogoni became the Big Issue. The June 12, 1993 polls had been annulled, and Abacha had sacked Shonekan’s Interim Government and imposed himself on Nigerians. The opposition was so fierce and desperate. At a time, the only credential one needed to make some magazines’ covers was merely the possession of guts to call Abacha names. So any one who could rattle the government was carried shoulder high. And because of their grievance against Abacha, Brother Ken and his Ogoni people became daily front-page and cover stars in newspapers and magazines. TV screens equally scrambled for them.

This was a vital point the MOSOP leaders missed when their struggle became an effective prop to put Abacha under pressure by the June 12 soldiers and the International Community who Abacha had repudiated, and who were determined to keep the heat on him. It became convenient to hurriedly forget that MOSOP actually boycotted the said election. And in their euphoria at the overwhelming media blitz and support they were enjoying, MOSOP leaders never stopped to wonder whether a June 12 government, or indeed any other one, can indeed grant their demand. Maybe, if they had thought about that, they, probably, would have stopped themselves from being stampeded into an avoidable tragedy. And, perhaps, diminutive Ken would probably be alive today. Of course, the attitude of the present “democratic” government of Gen. Obasanjo to the Niger Delta on Resource Control amply vindicates this point.

Perhaps, it is probably too late in the day to start issuing blames here and there. But as late Andy Akporugo pointed out in The Guardian on Sunday, November 26, 1995, there “is a certain realisation, reluctant perhaps, that there may have been a bit of unnecessary bravado and impertinence” in the whole affair. One hopes that the gruesome tragedy will, as Mr. Akporugo said in the same essay, “inspire new vistas in the ways we see ourselves, the laws we make, and the company we keep.” Adieu Ken.

November 2003