At No 9, Rumuibekwe Road in Port Harcourt on November 10, 1995, the devil sat in a corner, having a saturnalia. No one could see him. He wore dark goggles, donning the uniform of a five-star Army General, wrapped up in a huge celebratory mood. His arch-enemy, Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists had just been hanged at the Port Harcourt Prison.
When it came, the hanged activists shook restlessly in their graves. President Muhammadu Buhari recently played host to some Ogoni leaders who had come to pay him a courtesy call at the Aso Rock Villa. Receiving them, Buhari in his address, said that, “In spite of the grievous circumstances, the federal government will consider the request for the grant of pardon to finally close the Ogoni saga.
A year after the Ogoni Bill of Rights was signed, it was amended in August 1991, authorizing and empowering MOSOP to seek international assistance for the plight of the Ogoni people and make an appeal to the international community. Saro-Wiwa thus began engagements with multilateral organizations, United Nations, US, Europe and other groups all over the world to sensitize them about the evil being perpetrated by Shell, in cahoots with the Nigerian military government.
It will seem that the assignment was to deliver Saro-Wiwa’s head on a platter. Then came the Abacha Constitutional Conference which the Ogoni agreed that Ken should attend as their representative to voice their plight. Ken however did not submit the form until its submission expired. At a rally in Gokana Local Government which he called to address the people, he was forcefully prevented from mounting the podium and escorted to his car by Mobile Policemen.
Finding Saro-Wiwa and the others guilty, Auta, in a 3-hour judgement, said the murder of the Ogoni four had the accused Ogoni leaders’ hands in it. He sad their offence which contravened the Civil Disturbances Decree of 1987 and punishable by S 316 of the Criminal Code. He thus found the accused guilty and to be hanged by their necks. One Victoria Vokwe had given evidence that Saro-Wiwa told her that there would be a revolution in Ogoni land and heads would roll.
Several declassified information pointed at the fact that Saro-Wiwa was murdered by the Nigerian state. He was a sore in their throats and if he and his MOSOP continued, they would put “sand-sand” in the “gari” of the Nigerian military elite who profited from the environmental sorrows of the Ogoni people. With his education, international connection and reach, Saro-Wiwa was fast penetrating the sacred groove of international attention. He had to die.
Ken-Saro Wiwa.... Or do you mean Salisu Buhari?
Saro Wiwa though I'm still baffled why he was incarcerated and subsequently killed by the then military government.
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