Archive August 2, 2025

Lagos, Nigeria – Before his body went limp, the man yelled, “Lord, take my soul, but the struggle continues.” It swung gently from the makeshift gallows, hurriedly built a few days earlier. The prison had last carried out a death sentence during British rule 30 years prior that morning.

It was November 10, 1995.

For weeks, local activists from the small Ogoniland settlement in Nigeria’s lush Niger Delta region had been protesting against oil spills seeping into their farmland and the gas flares choking them. The Niger Delta, which produces the crude that gave Nigeria its 80% of its foreign earnings, was rife with soldiers carrying weapons from General Sani Abacha’s feared military dictatorship. They responded to the protests with force.

Ken Saro-Wiwa, a well-known playwright and environmental activist, faced his fate on that fateful day. A week earlier, a military tribunal had declared his sentence. And just the day before, five executioners tasked with carrying it out had flown in from the northern city of Sokoto.

Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists who were detained alongside him for murder were removed from the army camp at 5am, leaving Port Harcourt, the regional hub a short drive from Ogoniland. There, they were herded into a room and shackled. Then were they followed by a tour of the gallows. Saro-Wiwa went first.

It took five attempts to kill him. The activist yelled out in disbelief after a failed tug: “Why are you treating me this way? ” What kind of country is this”?

The gallows finally worked as intended on the final attempt. By 3: 15pm, all nine men had been executed. Their bodies were placed in coffins, loaded into vehicles and escorted by armed guards to the public cemetery. As soldiers fired tear gas into the air to stifle any notions of rebellion, thousands of horrified people lined the streets to watch the procession. No relatives of the nine men were allowed into the cemetery. No respectful burials or goodbyes from loved ones were held.

Thirty years later, on June 12 this year, Nigeria’s Democracy Day, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu pardoned Saro-Wiwa and the others – the Ogoni Nine as they had become known. He went on to call them heroes and awarded them prestigious national titles.

The pardons were insufficient, but they did have a moving effect for Noo Saro-Wiwa, the daughter of Saro-Wiwa, who is now 49, and other relatives of the executed men. In Ogoniland, it reopened old wounds that remained as deep as when they were first inflicted all those years ago.

Saro Wiwa, accidental environmental activist

Before his death at age 54, Saro-Wiwa wanted to be known as a great writer.

He had a lot of energy, but books were his true love. More than two dozen books, poems and essays bore his name. His radio and television plays were incredibly successful, particularly one that made fun of the corrupt Nigerian elite, which seized power after independence in 1960. In the short story Africa Kills Her Sun, Saro-Wiwa eerily warned of his killing: A man condemned to death pens a long letter to his lover, Zole, on the eve of his execution, telling her not to grieve.

Saro-Wiwa’s execution made him a martyr for the Ogoni people – the man whose death drew international attention to their plight.

A 17-year-old Saro-Wiwa wrote letters to the government and oil companies in 1958 asking how delta communities would benefit from oil dollars. Later on, his essays highlighted how Ogoniland still lacked infrastructure – roads, electricity, water – despite the oil.

The Ogoni Bill of Rights was presented to the Nigerian government under the leadership of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), which he cofounded in October 1990. In it, the Ogoni people denounced the dominance of the majority tribes (Hausa, Yoruba and Igbo) and the sidelining of minorities like the Ogoni. They called for political autonomy and direct control of oil profits, saying:

The thirty years of Nigerian independence have only revealed the terrible leadership of the majority ethnic groups and their cruelty as they have caused the country to experience ethnic strife, carnage, war, dictatorship, retrogression, and the greatest waste of national resources ever seen, turning generations of Nigerians, both born and unborn, into perpetual debtors.

It marked Saro-Wiwa as a thorn in the side of the military dictators, and from 1992 to 1993, he was arrested without charge several times. He rebuffed the slow death, as he claimed Ogonis were, and continued to do so.

“I accuse the oil companies of practising genocide against the Ogoni”, he wrote in one article. The Nigerian government, he said, was complicit.

In Ogoniland, Saro-Wiwa’s fervour permeated. About 300, 000 Ogonis, out of a population of half a million, marched with him in January 1993 to peacefully protest against the Nigerian government and Shell, the oil company that they said bore particular responsibility for the oil spills in their part of the delta.

One of the largest mass demonstrations ever to take place in Nigeria at the time. Protesters carried signs with messages like: “Assassins, go home”. The protests were so large that the world began to notice the Ogonis and the slight, articulate man speaking for them. Soon, he was addressing the Ogonis case at the UN. Environmental rights groups like Greenpeace noted and supported his activism.

By the end of that year, riots were taking place and enraged protesters had destroyed billion-dollar oil pipelines. Shell was forced to suspend operations. The government promptly deployed a special task force to suppress what is now known as the Ogoni Rebellion. According to reports from Amnesty International, soldiers brutally suppressed protests, carried out extrajudicial killings, raped and tortured scores of people.

Infighting and organized crime in Ogoniland

By 1994 and with soldiers still in Ogoniland, tensions were running high. Splits within the MOSOP leadership were also emerging with one side, led by Saro-Wiwa, calling for a stronger stance against the government and another preaching pacifism.

Saro-Wiwa’s had a close relationship with Edward Kobani as a child. He was also a pacifist who opposed his friend’s mobilisation of young people in rallies that rang with angry rhetoric. Their relationship was changed by his opposition to violence. More broadly, the mood in the region was turning against the pacifists, who were increasingly seen as sellouts colluding with the military regime and Shell although there is no evidence they were working with either.

On May 21, 1994, word spread that some MOSOP leaders had gathered for a meeting at the chief’s palace in Ogoniland’s Gokana district but soldiers had blocked Saro-Wiwa from entering the area. Incensed, rioters attacked those who could lay their hands on as they marched to the meeting point. Four of them – Kobani, Alfred Badey, and the brothers Samuel and Theophilus Orage, who were Saro-Wiwa’s in-laws – were clubbed with everything from broken bottles to sharpened rakes. Then they were engulfed in flames.

The Nigerian military immediately accused Saro-Wiwa of inciting the killings and arrested him the next day. At a news conference, the military administrator of Rivers State, which Ogoniland is part of, declared MOSOP a “terror group” and Saro Wiwa, a “dictator who has … no room for dissenting views”. Nordu Eawo, Saturday Dobee, John Kpuine, Paul Levera, Felix Nuate, Daniel Gbooko, Barinem Kiobel, and Baribor Bera were the only MOSOP leaders who were detained.

In detention, the men were reportedly chained, beaten and denied medication or visits. Their trial by a military tribunal was described by Amnesty International as a “sham.” Civilian defence lawyers were assaulted and their evidence discarded. In protest, the lawyers boycotted the hearings.

Reports from the time noted how Saro-Wiwa looked ahead in court without a word or glanced through a newspaper.

The Ogoni Nine are battling for justice.

Noo Saro-Wiwa was 19 and in her second year of college when her father was executed. Born in Port Harcourt, she lived and studied in London. She had no idea that her life had changed until the execution occurred. It wasn’t until late that night that her mother, Maria, managed to reach her on her landline.

She gave a shock as she did. Noo, who is now a travel writer and author based in London, told Al Jazeera in a phone call that it was hard to imagine the man who would amble into her room while she idled on her bed and thrust a book in her face with a “Read this”! could be killed in such a way. After all, Nelson Mandela was one of the influential international voices who pressed for the government of Nigeria to release him.

Noo’s brother, Ken, was in New Zealand to attend the opening of the annual Commonwealth of Nations meeting and press for Nigeria’s suspension. At the time, Nigeria had a significant aid source thanks to the association of former British colonies.

The world, too, reacted with shock. Nigeria was suspended from the Commonwealth, and the United States and several other countries severed diplomatic ties. Noo recalls being unsure why the story was being ran by British news outlets frequently. That’s when it dawned on Noo how great her father’s task had been.

Noo explained that while her family was determined to bring about justice, it was a difficult road. In 1996, her brother and uncle sued Shell, which the Ogoni Nine families accused of complicity by aiding the military. Shell denied the allegations.

The lawsuit lasted until 2009 when the business settled for $ 15 million, which was filed in the US under a law that allows for jurisdiction in foreign disputes. Shell said it was “humanitarian and legal fees”.

Noo noted that the majority of it was used to pay for the legal fees and establish a trust fund that still provides scholarships to Ogoni students. It’s annoying, though, she added, that critics claim her family and the others got rich on the settlement.

“It was a tiny amount”, she said. Who wants their parent killed for a $15 million settlement, even if it weren’t?

Noo claimed for many years that she had no control over her feelings when she visited or heard the name “Shell.” The company was also taken to The Hague in 2017 by a group of Ogoni Nine widows with the support of Amnesty International, however, a judge ruled there was no evidence that Shell was complicit in the government executions.

Meanwhile, Amnesty said in a 2017 report that it had found evidence that Shell executives had met with military officials and “encouraged” them to suppress protests. According to the report, the business transported soldiers and “at least one time paid a military commander notorious for human rights violations.”

Shell denied the claims and said it pleaded with the government for clemency for the Ogoni Nine.

Since then, Noo has found the motivation to travel to Ogoniland. She first went back in 2005, 10 years after her father’s execution. The region has become even more volatile as ethnic militias now patrol the creeks, attacking soldiers, controlling oil pipelines and kidnapping oil workers at sea.

Noo stated that the destruction in her home country will be the subject of her upcoming book. Her brother and mother died in the past decade, leaving her and Zina, her US-based twin sister. She claimed that Shell suffered from the losses, but she now frequently travels back home to watch the oil spills, which continue even though Shell didn’t restart operations following the protests in 1993.

Life as a writer abroad contrasts jarringly with her life back home, Noo said. One week, she is walking down the streets of Paris, and the next, she is standing in oil-soaked farms in Ogoniland. However, she continued, her work in Nigeria makes her think of her father’s struggle.

“My father was a real kind of David vs Goliath”, Noo said. The majority of people from that time were unaware of Ogoni. As I get older, I’m just always more in awe of what he achieved. It was quite incredible”.

Too little, too late?

Environmental groups claim that Shell’s leaky pipes continue to pump oil into the earth despite these years. The company, which plans to sell its onshore assets and exit the Niger Delta after so many years of controversy, has always claimed its pipes are being sabotaged.

Calculated or accidental, the oily devastation is visible in the eerie stillness of Ogoniland’s mangroves, which should be alive with the sounds of chirping insects and croaking frogs. Old, stooped fishermen cast nets that raise air in murky rivers that are sputtering with oil.

Nubari Saatah, an Ogoni, has long advocated for Ogonis to control their oil wealth, just as activists before him did. Ogonis have remained bitter ever since the rebellion, according to the Niger Delta Congress political movement’s president, primarily because Nigeria has not resolved the broken relationship or rectified injustices by granting Ogonis control of their land.

Saatah, author of the 2022 book What We Must Do: Towards a Niger Delta Revolution, regularly appears on radio and TV shows to comment on the Niger Delta crisis and often places the blame for the region’s instability at the government’s doorstep.

“The violent militancy that engulfed the Niger Delta was a direct reaction to the violence visited on the peaceful methods employed by Ogoni”, Saatah said.

He continued, “Unfortunately for the Ogoni, the executions created a leadership vacuum that hasn’t been filled up to this day.”

A UN Environmental Programme report in 2011 found that more than 50 years of oil extraction in Ogoniland had caused the water in much of the region to be contaminated with extremely high levels of toxic hydrocarbons like benzene. In one village, the groundwater’s benzene content exceeded 900 times the recommended World Health Organization standard.

Cleaning up the devastation and restoring the land would require the “world’s most wide-ranging and long-term oil clean-up exercise ever undertaken”, the report said.

Although Nigeria and Shell committed in 2012 to a clean-up through the Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project (HYPREP), more than a decade later, progress has been slow and hard to measure, critics said.

Saatah attributed the lack of results to the government. Abuja, he said, has not funded the programme as promised. That conveys to Ogonis a message that the government is uninterested, he continued. Shell, meanwhile, has contributed $270m to the project. Al Jazeera reached out to HYPREP for comment but did not receive a response.

Saatah noted that there is still some change. When the clean-up started, government authorities installed a sign at the community well in Saatah’s village of Bomu that read: “Warning! Don’t drink this water, please.

People hardly glanced at the post as they fetched their drinking water, largely because there were no alternative water sources. In the past five or so years, however, HYPREP has installed potable water tanks in Bomu. Saatah is concerned about the long-term viability of the project and how much burden will be placed on his neighborhood.

Some in Ogoniland view the recent pardoning of the Ogoni Nine as suspicious, given that it comes at a time when Nigeria is experiencing one of its worst financial declines and the government is desperate to extract and sell more crude oil.

Resuming active exploration in Ogoniland, which stopped in 1993, could yield up to 500, 000 barrels of crude per day, a MOSOP official, which is still operating, told reporters last year. That would be on top of the current 1.7 million barrels per day produced from other parts of the delta.

According to Saatah, “the lines are drawn between the pardon of the Ogoni Nine and the reprise of oil.” The pardons, he said, were to sweeten the Ogoni people and avoid any opposition.

However, he said that Ogoni communities are unlikely to agree to renewed exploration because, Saatah said, first, locals are still able to control oil profits, and second, Tinubu’s pardoning of the Ogoni Nine has only exacerbated internal tensions, Saatah said.

Rifts that emerged during the 1994 crisis have not healed. The fact that the president’s speech did not acknowledge the four murdered MOSOP members in the mob action that led to Saro-Wiwa’s arrest has angered their families and supporters, some of whom fault the aggressive stance of Saro-Wiwa for what happened.

Noo and the Ogoni Nine families are either dissatisfied with the government’s choice or not.

The national honour was a welcome surprise, Noo said, but the pardons were not enough.

A pardon implies something, such as that a crime was first committed, she said. “But nothing’s been committed”.