November 10: The
writer-activist Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed by the Nigerian government on this
day in 1995. Officially, Saro-Wiwa and eight others were convicted of being
responsible for the murder of four Ogoni tribal chiefs, but most regard the
hangings as a political rather than a judicial act. Saro-Wiwa and the others
had been too outspoken in their criticism of those who were developing and
polluting the oil-rich Niger Delta, and had accused too many—federal
politicians, tribal chiefs, Shell Oil—of having their fingers in the
"lootocracy" pie. When the protestors could not be bribed,
blackmailed, or beaten into stopping their campaign to obtain a measure of
self-determination and prosperity for their Ogoni people, they were hung, their
bodies buried in a secret, common grave.
Shell recently settled out-of-court with the families of
those executed, the $15.5 million offered as a "gesture of
reconciliation" rather than an admission of culpability. But in the fifteen years since Saro-wiwa's death, the
combined oil, ethnic, and environmental conflicts in the Niger Delta have spun
almost out of control, turning the region into Africa's Wild West. In the
opening pages of A Swamp Full of Dollars:
Pipelines and Paramilitaries at Nigeria's Frontier (2009), investigative
journalist Michael Peel describes his rendezvous
with Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, one of the most visible contemporary activist-rebels
camped out in the Delta, as if "Nigeria's Robin Hood, the creeks and
mangroves his Sherwood Forest":
…After a few minutes, the branches fell away like a curtain
to reveal the theatre of Asari's camp. I could see smoke and hear drums and
chanting. A long white drape fluttered from a stick 20 feet high, like a
pennant at a medieval English jousting tournament. The flag had been raised in
honor of Egbesu, a spirit revered by members of Asari's Ijaw ethnic group.
Nearby a man in a red hat was holding what looked from a distance like a black
chicken. I heard a sound like a flute, as if serenading the visitors to this
sacred grove.
Saro-Wiwa's campaign on behalf of the Ogoni was non-violent
and grass-roots; Peel notes that all of Asari's men carry AK-47s, and that
their leader owns a handful of vehicles, most of them Mercedes.
Daybook is contributed by Steve King, who teaches in the English Department of Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland. His literary daybook began as a radio series syndicated nationally in Canada. He can be found online at todayinliterature.com.
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