Let’s Not Forget The Ogoni Nine

Many young Nigerians born after the Second Republic would find it difficult to believe what Nigerians went through in the hands of the military junta led by Generals Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha, the BBA Gang.
If they care to look back, they would understand the context in which the recent confession by Babangida to some of their crimes. On the positive side, they would be inspired by the resilience of those who stood to be counted amongst those who resisted evil.
In almost forty years, I have tried to understand why fellow Nigerians, not the white men who colonized us or other foreigners would inflict so much pain on their fellow citizens and inflict so much anguish on their land. There is no question that those of us who resolved to reject military rule, realized early in the struggle that the military would not relinquish power voluntarily, and confronting them would be costly. Not just for us, but for the nation and the people.
The resilience of the forces behind the problems we encounter on a daily basis has become one of the mysteries of our time. The collective punishment of the Niger Delta, especially the Ogoni, is solid proof of the evil that has stalked the land.
The crime of the Ogoni was that they dared to demand their right to survive and against their oppression by the state and the oil companies. These pains inflicted by the BBA Gang was given a bizarre legal stamp by the lawyers who drafted the decrees and the judges who perfected the judicial murder and the hangmen who executed Ken Saro-Wiwa and his compatriots, making the whole drama tragic and absurd.
I am not trying to reopen old wounds. There are too many festering wounds in the history of Nigeria that have not been healed through tendering or the outflow of time. Is it the wounds of the civil war? Or the other innumerable wounds that have continued to plague, wounds that have perpetually tormented the soul of the nation?
The legacy of hatred, mutual suspicion, discrimination, and oppression has continued to torment the nation and the people.
Many Nigerians born 20 years ago would hardly remember who Ken was or point out Ogoni in the physical map of Nigeria. As Bishop Kukah described it, this collective amnesia has been the main problem of Nigerians. A nation without a memory would never know where to apply remedy to wrongs done and the right remedies to apply.
Nigerians, it would seem, are adept at living with pain and accepting it as an act of God or simply, helplessly, accept that there is nothing they can do about it. They believe the pain would disappear.
I remember Ken, his siblings and members of his larger family, and the families of the Ogoni Nine. I saw them all as Ken and his people fought for their lives.
I met Ken in 1985, like most journalists who worked at The Guardian newsroom in the 80s. He frequently came to the newsroom to drop an article or visit some of the editors. He was a short man but with a commanding presence.
His trademark pipe, which seemed to have been permanently glued to his lips, reminded me of my grandfather, who smoked a pipe. I had resisted the temptation as a young boy to take a drag when I was asked to fetch burning coal to light the tobacco.
Ken was very popular but controversial. He had a wide healthy smile, betraying well-set teeth, coloured brown by tobacco. His sitcom Basi and Company featured two of my colleagues – Affiong Usani as Segi and John Nwobi as Boy Josco- and was watched by over thirty million viewers on the NTA network.
Nollywood was still in gestation, but the whiff of it was discernible. Nigerians love drama and dramatists. Without drama, Nigerians would have been called something else. The way we dance, preach in churches, speak, gesture, or fold the agbada and the well-known Nigerian swag, are all wrapped in drama. Drama is about comedy or tragedy.
Saro-Wiwa weaved both like a basket, and they were to play out with time. One day , I asked to interview him, he smiled and invited me to his house at Dideolu Estate, Ogba in Lagos. I met him early at breakfast and waited patiently for him to finish. Then he beckoned me to join him in his Peugeot 505 as we drove to his office in Surulere.
On the way, we discussed the plight of minorities in Nigeria and the Ogoni struggle. I asked him probing questions to ascertain his real intentions. I suspected he had secessionist aspirations, and having fought the Biafra secession, why was he dragging his relatively small ethnic group along that ruinous path?
I understood the content of the Ogoni Bill of Rights, but why had the Ogoni adopted a flag and a national anthem, and why was he talking about self-determination?
‘The Boy Scout movement and the Red Cross have flags and anthems, he replied, laughing. “These are just symbols of a common identity, he added. ”Why are you not fighting for all Nigerians? What is peculiar about Ogoni?”
He looked at me intensely. The laughter had gone. He removed the pipe and said: “I have been fighting for Nigeria all my life; by fighting for the cause of the Ogoni. I am fighting for Nigeria, to save Nigeria. By focusing on Ogoni, I am focussing on the inequities, the injustice in the Niger Delta and Nigeria.
“We ended the interview with Ken declaring, “Look, Abdul, you are a minority, you are Ogoni.” Ken assured me that the Ogoni struggle was non-violent, and he would keep it that way so as not to give the military Junta the excuse to massacre his people.
As it turned out, his fears were not misplaced. When the military moved in and began the pacification of Ogoniland, like the colonial masters, they pitied no one. After that initial encounter with Ken, we became friends and comrades, and he treated me like a member of his family.
His well-articulated grievances against the Federal Government and oil companies, especially Shell, appealed to me. I was convinced about his good heart and good intentions towards the Ogoni people and all Nigerians. He wanted a different Nigeria that treats her people with dignity, that recognizes that people must benefit from their natural endowment, live in dignity and pursue their livelihood in an atmosphere conducive to their survival and the survival of the delicate Niger delta ecosystem.
Ledum Mitee, MOSOP Vice President, didn’t strike me as a man who can hurt a fly. His arguments were laced with quotations from sections of the Constitution and the various UN declarations and human rights instruments. He believed in the rule of law and the struggle to be fought within the ambit of the law. He was lucky to have escaped the hangman’s noose.
In the course of the struggle, I visited Bane, Ken’s Community. I also spent some time at Kono Beach with John Yowika and his ex-wife Joi Nunieh and became a member of their family. I also visited Ledum’s community and several other villages in Ogoni and found that the Ogoni uprising would have happened even if Ken was not involved.
Ken was a great organizer and very focussed on his goal. He would have served Nigeria more than he did if he was not a victim of Abacha’s blood lust. He was also the President of the Ethnic Minorities Rights Organisation of Africa (EMIROAF), with Alfred Ilenrhe, his look-alike, who hailed from Iruekpen, in Edo Central, Edo State. Alfred was the Secretary-General. The two stalwarts of the struggle articulated the issues of minorities in every forum they went to. Their knowledge of the ethnic composition of Nigeria was remarkable.
Ken and Alfred canvassed for equality of ethnic groups irrespective of their population size. They argued that natural resources found in the communities could not legitimately be exploited unless they gave their free and informed consent. These resources did not belong to everybody but to those communities on whose soil the resources are located.
This was the essence of federalism. When Ken and Ledum were arrested, we took it as one of those routine harassments that we had gotten used to. However, when a special Military Tribunal was established to try them, we knew it was more serious than we thought.
The pacification of the Ogoni had reached its tragic climax. During the trial, Major Paul Okuntimo had denied the defense team access to Ken despite a directive by Justice Auta. One day, late Gani Fawehinmi raised the issue again, and the judge once more directed that we be allowed access.
Okuntimo, who had only just been promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, threatened to deal with Gani if he dared to step into Bori Camp, the Nigeria Army Amphibious Brigade’s headquarters in Port Harcourt, where Ken was held under maximum security. Gani replied that we would come there and “heaven can fall if it must.”
After the day’s proceedings, Gani mobilized the defense team, and we headed to Bori Camp. I knew the camp quite well, having stayed there on holidays when my late uncle, served at the camp. As we filed into our vehicles, my heart was in my mouth. I was not easily afraid of such engagements, but I felt uneasy, a feeling of foreboding. I was sure something would go wrong. I dismissed my fear.
On arrival at the camp, we were invited into the officers’ mess which had been turned into Ken’s Prison. When Okuntimo saw Gani, the boisterous Army Colonel had changed his dress to the white pastoral robes of the Aladura church, a pastor who claimed to know 201 ways of killing a man.
“Welcome, Chief Gani,” he said. With a touch of drama, he turned toward the lawyers and the press, and addressing no one in particular, he said, “Gani is my friend.” I don’t think anyone believed him. Then he brought Ken out of his dungeon.
Ken looked frail, weak, and sad. The pipe was there all right, but there was no tobacco. Even though we had seen him in court, that was the first time we had a private moment with him. Ken greeted Gani warmly and thanked us for our effort. Then, he turned to Col Okuntimo: ”You bastard, the spirit of Ogoni People will punish you.”
Okutinmo offered no reply. He moved swiftly with his flowing white garment and drove off in his Army green official Peugeot 504 car. A few minutes later, we were told our time was up.
Our brief encounter with Ken was the last time I saw him alive. I was in detention when on November 10, 1995, Ken Saro-Wiwa, along with Barinem Kiobel, Saturday Dobee, Paul Levura, Nordu Eawo, Felix Nuate, Daniel Giokoo, John Kpuinen, and Baribor Bera, were hanged in the Port Harcourt prison. The bodies of all the “OGONI 9” were placed in shallow graves and covered with quicklime so that the corpses would be destroyed. We must not forget.
– By Abdul Oroh