Remembering Ken Saro-Wiwa: Sixteen Years After by Kayode Ketefe

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Remembering Ken Saro-Wiwa, 16 years after
KAYODE KETEFE
Today, November 10, 2011 exactly marks 16th year after the judicial murder of the famous Ogoni, environmentalist, social critic, and orator who was one of the most vociferous social critics in Nigerian history, Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa.Born on October 10, 1941, the indefatigable Ogoni son who  co-founded the “Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People” (MOSOP) in 1990,  devoted all his adult life to waging sustained, albeit non-terroristic battle against all forces threatening the survival of his native land.
Several years of unconscionable exploitation of crude oil with no concomitant sustainability and ethical programmes by the multinational oil companies had left most parts of Niger Delta region ecologically degraded, with both fauna and flora endangered, the land infertile, the rivers and all in-dwelling lives poisoned and the people impoverished. This, coupled with the Federal government’s infrastructural neglect of the area in spite of billions of dollars realised every year from the oil exploitation, constituted callous human rights abuse which inspired Saro-Wiwa to activism.
Saro-Wiwa’s energies and passion for procuring justice for his people were so remarkable that he became the symbol of the struggles. His philosophy of non-violent struggles found parallelism in the ideology of the late popular African-American activist, Martin Luther King, and he was adored by many for this.
Saro-Wiwa was a total fighter who believed in using all his God-given abilities to propagate, protect and promote a cause. You would see him writing, speaking, tutoring, campaigning, all in a bid to put across a message- that Ogoni people, and indeed the people of Niger Delta deserved to be protected against the broadside of man’s inhumanity to man borne out of sheer economic greed.
In propagating his single-themed survivalist crusade, Saro-Wiwa travelled all over Nigeria and the world. He sponsored documents of the abuses to the United Nations as evinced in instruments like Ogoni Bill of Rights.
 In all these Saro-Wiwa, who was very good at persuasive argumentation, never got tired of dazzling with his oratory.With his trademark pipe delicately poised in his mouth, Saro-Wiwa would beam an infectious smile, then he would gingerly remove the pipe and launch softly into his survivalist homiletics, and along the way, his voice would boom, soaring many octaves high with unwavering vigour as he methodically reeled out the gory tale of modern tragedy, nay holocaust, being conspiratorially perpetrated by the then Nigerian Federal military government and the oil prospecting/exploiting multinationals against the minorities of the Niger-Delta.
With fact and figures at his fingertips, a very fecund mind nudging him, and the tool of honesty as his inspiration, Saro-Wiwa would paint convincing pictures that essentially underscored the degradation of Ogoni’s bio-physical environment, then going on (and still extant) in the Niger-Delta. He was a real prophet championing the cause of justice for his people.Saro-Wiwa was a promoter of a sacred mission, the inspirer of a noble ideology, the light in dark tunnel of oppression and champion of the cause of the downtrodden. 
He was a vanguard in the terrifying battle against greater powers; and though blood-soaked and sapped from the fiery darts of the enemies, he remained unflinching-till the very end.
Though arrested, incarcerated and held incommunicado times without numbers by the Federal Government, Saro-Wiwa’s spirit refused to succumb against all odd; he was too engrossed with the gospel of preservation of his Ogoni people to be daunted by mere personal misfortune.
When they saw that his indomitable spirit could not be broken; that the message of humanity was spreading, the  enemies, or rather the coalition of the enemies, employed the most damned ancient trick of all-they sponsored discord within his treasured “household” and created divisions which finally blew apart the unity of purpose among his Ogoni people. Alas! In-fighting began and Saro-Wiwa was roped in the allegation of masterminding the killing of four of his kinsmen. He was arrested alongside eight others.
Although Saro-Wiwa’s trial was flawed by many enlightened commentators for being substandard to modern concept of justice administration, the tribunal pronounced death sentence on him.Saro-Wiwa was eventually hanged by Sani Abacha-led military government alongside the eight other activists (co-accused) on November 10, 1995.
 Standing unfazed before the military tribunal that sentenced him to death, the courageous Saro Wiwa, still had the presence of mind and the poise to craft the following moving speech, “My Lord, we all stand before history.
I am a man of peace, of ideas. Appalled by the denigrating poverty of my people who live on a richly endowed land, distressed by their political marginalisation and economic strangulation, angered by the devastation of their land, their ultimate heritage, anxious to preserve their right to life and to a decent living, and determined to usher to this country as a whole a fair and just democratic system which protects everyone and every ethnic group and gives us all a valid claim to human civilisation.
“No imprisonment or death can stop our ultimate victory.” Now history has proved him right, his killers only succeeded in killing the messenger and not the message. They killed a man who propagate his ideology through peaceful means but when arms insurrection and violent struggle began the Federal Government could not contain it, it had to pacify the militants through the amnesty package  and even the problem is still intractable. That is a real irony.
To Kenule Saro-Wiwa, may his gifted soul rest his perfect peace; to his killers, may their crooked souls burn in hottest hell!