There is hardly any knowledgeable Nigerian or citizen of the world who needs the introduction of Kenule Beeson Saro Wiwa, Africa's greatest human and environmental rights activist of international repute who, through his ideas and towering intellectual endowments, deployed his pen and and his piercing oratorical prowess as tools of a vigorous, irresistible non-violent soul force campaign against the genocide Shell company and the Nigerian government practiced against the Ogoni and their environment. Even as pleas for clemency poured in from world leaders and the international community, the damned noose of the hangman would violently grab his little neck and snuff life out of him on the gallows on November 10, 1995, on the orders of late General Sani Abacha after a Kangaroo military tribunal headed by (in)Justice Ibrahim Auta inappropriately found him guilty on trumped up charges of murder. The greatest irony being that a man who was in principle and practice opposed to violence, and who throughout his epic struggle advocated and favoured the non-violent approach as model for agitation; a man who couldn't throw a stone, a man who didn't know where the trigger was on a riffle, would die in the hands of violent men, falsely accused of a violent crime!
Ken Saro Wiwa lived for only 54 years, and even though he was an educationist, playwright, politician and television producer, it was his non-violent struggle as environmental right activist championed through MOSOP that earned him international fame, and cast him in the apparel of something like a deity, an immortal in Ogoni land.
The Ogoni struggle for justice after decades of mindless oil exploitation on their land and the concomitant environmental despoliation was hinged on a tripod as succinctly posited in the Ogoni Bill of Rights (OBR): (a) quest for environmental justice and restoration; (b) quest for political justice against political marginalization, a right to fair representation in all Nigerian national institutions; (c) quest for economic justice to break the yoke of economic strangulation of the Ogoni. Although the tripod, as earlier stated, was boldly proclaimed in the OBR, it's the environmental plank that has always gained prominence over the other two, the campaign of MOSOP for Ogoni project 2015 notwithstanding.
In 2011, sixteen years after Ken Saro Wiwa was murdered, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released a damning report stating that vast areas of Ogoniland are unsafe for human habitation due to oil pollution. The report found that, in over 40 locations tested, the soil is polluted to a depth of 5 metres. Ogoniland's water bodies are all polluted. The levels of benzene in approximately 90 of the locations is more than 900 times above accepted World Health Organisation standards. This dangerously contaminated water is the source of drinking water for local communities. The UNEP report recommended that US$1 billion should be allocated to set up an environmental restoration fund and begin the clean up. In the four years since the report was published, the Nigerian government simply looked the other way even as Ogoni people buried their dead in worrying numbers every weekend as a result of illness mostly from oil pollution.
Ironically, a Niger Deltan who should have better understood the lugubrious reality of oil pollution on the environment, health and lives of the people was the President of Nigeria at the time the UNEP report on Ogoni land was published. Sadly, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, for reasons that can never be appreciated in this life and in the life to come simply looked the other way in spite of repeated pleas from Ogoni leaders as hydrocarbon pollution continued to wreck lives and livelihood in Ogoni land
But it's God that drives flies from cows without tails. On June 2, seven days from today, President Muhammadu Buhari, a Fulani from Daura in Katsina State will be live in body and soul in Ogoni land to launch what is without question the biggest environmental restoration project in the history of the African continent. That will be the day!
The effect of that commitment will be colossal and profound, not only in the Niger Delta, not only in Nigeria but in the African continent at large. The government of Nigeria headed by Buhari will be sending out a rare, if clear message, regrettably late as it is coming though, that if a small group of people can organise themselves and intellectually situate their agitation in a non-violent manner, the government and the world can come to their aid and heed their cry without the need to carry guns, spill blood and break bones. So the Ogoni situation presents a clear opportunity to President Buhari, which if affectively and honestly utilised, can ignite a paradigm shift in the way Nigerians look at and reward those who agitate peacefully.
Before now, the norm has been that the attention of the government of Nigeria can only be secured by those who indulge in violent agitation and commit crimes against the country. We have seen it in the Niger Delta where armed militants blew up oil installations and got rewarded with multi-billion Dollar contracts and amnesty that only benefited them, not the entire Niger Delta people or the environment. They are at it again now that the money they got is running low. We are about to witness it in the north-east of Nigeria where Boko Haram embarked on a senseless carnage and government is about to spend billions of Dollars to rehabilitate the place. Viewed from that backdrop, the Ogoni clean up will be a watershed in the way government responds to non-violent struggles.
The implementation of the report, if religiously executed, will be the greatest posthumous vindication of Ken Saro Wiwa and eight of his compatriots, and the methods of constructive non-violence the Ogoni used to campaign for their rights under the sun.
Now, I remember the immortal statement Ken Saro Wiwa wanted read out in the tribunal on the last day of his trial in 1995:
"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 marginalization 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 civilization, I have devoted all my intellectual and material resources, my very life, to a cause in which I have total belief and from which I cannot be blackmailed or intimated. I have no doubt at all about the ultimate success of my cause, no matter the trials and tribulations which I and those who believe with me may encounter on our journey. Neither imprisonment nor death can stop our ultimate victory"
Ken, ultimately, you have won. Your ideas have won. The methods of non-violence which you and those who believed in your cause favoured have won. The Ogoni people have won.
So, to President Buhari, to all those who will come with him to Ogoni land, to those that will follow the launch of the clean up of Ogoni land from all over the world on June 2, please, spare a thought for Ken Saro Wiwa and his struggle. The attention of the world will be beamed on Ogoni that day because of his intellectually driven non-violent struggle and the ultimate sacrifice he paid so that his people will live life more abundantly. The first plank of the tripod of the Ogoni question, if properly handled, will be answered on June 2. The political and economic struggles are still unanswered. May June 2 bring those other answers closer. The Ogoni have been through so much, and may their historic non-violent struggle receive all the answers it sought.
From the place of your rest, dear Ken, stand up and dance. Dance the guns to silence. Dance through the flames of Shell, for you have won the ultimate victory.
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