By Nnimmo Bassey, Global Greengrants Fund Board Chair and Director of Health of Mother Earth Foundation
On the 10th of November 1995, twenty years ago today, Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa and eight Ogoni patriots were hanged by the military dictatorship of General Sani Abacha following a kangaroo trial that received world-wide condemnation. Ken Saro-Wiwa’s activities prior to his death and the execution have become pivotal points in the environmental justice movement in Nigeria and around the world.
Since the entry of Shell, the oil giant, into Ogoniland in the 1950s, the company had been in dispute with the Ogoni people, who protested peacefully against the destruction of their environment, on which they depended for farming and fishing.
The frequent oil spills in Ogoniland and elsewhere in the Niger Delta have been estimated to be equal to an Exxon Valdez oil spill every year. Thousands of impacted sites in the Niger Delta remain to be properly remediated, making Ogoniland one of the most polluted places on Earth.
In response to the devastation of the Ogoni environment, Ken Saro-Wiwa led the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) to bring international attention to the ecological crisis, including through an Ogoni Bill of Rights issued in 1990.
In 1993, MOSOP conducted a peaceful protest involving 300,000 Ogoni people and declared Shell persona non grata in Ogoniland. The Abacha regime trumped up charges against the nine, arrested, tortured, and sentenced them to death, denying them space for appeal. Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed along with eight other Ogoni leaders: Saturday Dobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel Gbooko, Paul Levera, Felix Nuate, Baribor Bera, Barinem Kiobel, and John Kpuine.
The hanging of Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni 8 in 1995 was a culmination of the cruel crimes that were being committed against the Ogoni people as a result of extractive activities in the region.
In the last twenty years, several court cases have been brought against Shell before international courts, many of which have acknowledged the company’s reprehensible practices.
Read “Shell oil to pay $84 million for pollution in the Niger Delta” >>
In the same period, Nigeria has transitioned away from military dictatorship, Ken Saro-Wiwa’s last writings have been published to international acclaim, several honors and memorials have been instated, and there has been continuous international outcry for the remediation of the Niger Delta region.
Four years ago, a report of an assessment of the environment of Ogoniland was issued by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and absolutely validates all the complaints of the Ogoni people about the ruination of their environment. The implementation of the UNEP report will be a sort of restitution and penance for the harm inflicted on the people and their environment.
Global Greengrants Fund has supported the Ogoni struggle with grants to Host Communities Network, a group of Nigerian communities negatively impacted by the oil industry. Host Communities Network members took on Royal Dutch Shell in its home country, the Netherlands. In 2013, a Dutch court ruled that Shell must compensate a farmer after a spewing oil well ruined his farm. Although the same court threw out three other cases against Shell, the ruling was transformational: It set a precedent that multinational polluters can be held responsible in their home countries for environmental damages their subsidiaries cause in resource-rich countries like Nigeria.Check out the Vice News report on this victory.
It would probably also make Ken Saro-Wiwa and the other Ogoni martyrs turn in satisfaction in their graves, seeing that their struggle was not in vain.
We note the upsurge of criminalization of environmentalists around the world and join men and women of goodwill to demand a halt to the killing of community and environmental activists. We also call for the trial of leaders of corporations committing crimes against Mother Earth.
In his last statement, Ken Saro-wiwa predicted that “Shell’s day will surely come. The crime of the company’s dirty wars against the Ogoni people will be punished.”
While Shell has repeatedly denied involvement in the macabre affair leading to and including the executions, their failure to clean up the devastated Ogoni environment continues to reinforce their nonchalance towards the value of lives and property of the Ogoni people.
Photos from top: Ken Saro-Wiwa, Milieudefensie / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0, protesters at ShellUK / Martin Lesanto-Smith