Greed, Betrayal and the Battle for Nigeria’s Oil Money | The Ken Saro-Wiwa Story

When General Chukwuemeka Ojukwu declared the independence of the Biafran republic in May 1967, not many could have quite predicted the level of carnage and devastation that would befall the people of South-Eastern Nigeria over the course of the next 3 years.

Having concluded that their people were no longer safe anywhere within the borders of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, the political leaders of the Igbo ethnic group decided that the only way to save their people from ethnic persecution was to break away and form their own country.

Buried deep underneath the Biafran soil was one of Africa’s largest reserves of crude oil, and emboldened by the seemingly infinite money making potential of this precious black toxin, Biafra’s new leaders charged forward in full confidence that very ground they walked on was their golden ticket to becoming an African powerhouse. But just as it fuelled the Biafran fight for secession, the region’s vast deposits of black gold also reinforced the Nigerian government’s resolve to extinguish the Biafran uprising by any means necessary. With the newly independent state attempting to take away an estimated 67% of Nigeria’s oil reserves, the stage had been set for what would ultimately go down as the most violent conflict in West African History.

For 3 gruelling years, the Nigerian and Biafran armies would engage in a raging battle for dominance in which an estimated 2 million civilians would lose their lives due to starvation and disease.

But as with virtually all modern conflicts, the battle would be much more than just a violent exchange of bullets and explosives. The Nigerian civil war would see both belligerents engage in wartime propaganda with a level of sophistication never before seen on African soil. According to the Nigerians, the Biafran state was nothing more than a rogue insurgency sponsored by nefarious foreign powers seeking to destabilise and disintegrate a promising African country. The Biafran narrative on the other hand, invoked a much more visceral reaction. Their message to the international community was that the Nigerian state had adopted a policy of ethnic cleansing against the Igbo people and so Biafran independence was the only way to protect themselves from complete annihilation by a Nigerian state whose only interest was in the exploitation of their precious oil reserves.

But if the general rule is that history is written by the victors, then the Nigerian civil war might just be the exception. Although the war ultimately ended with a victory for the Nigerian army, the Biafran wartime message would have a long lasting impact on how Nigeria’s oil wealth would come to be viewed in the years following the war.

You see, one of the interesting paradoxes of the Biafran struggle was that in breaking away from Nigeria, the Igbo leaders also took with them a significant number of minority ethnic groups native to South Eastern Nigeria. And although many international observers ultimately came to associate Nigeria’s oil with the Igbo struggle for independence, the true heirs of Nigeria’s oil wealth in the strictest sense, were the various minority ethnic groups of the Niger Delta region. When added together, these groups amounted to as high as an estimated 40% of the wartime Biafran population and although many of them would remain relatively unknown both during and after the war, they would be arguably the worst affected victims of the never ending struggle for Nigeria’s oil.

One of such minority groups were the Ogonis, a poor but proud people who despite occupying a territory smaller than the size of Hong Kong, boasted of one of the deepest and most sought after crude oil deposits in the entire world. Representing less than 1% of Nigeria’s population, the Ogoni could perhaps be best described as a micro-minority ethnic group. According to folklore, the Ogonis trace their lineage all the way back to the ancient Ghana empire located in modern day Mali and according to linguistic studies, the Ogonis are likely to be one of the earliest settlers in modern day South-Eastern Nigeria.

As with most Nigerian ethnic minorities, the end of the civil war in 1970 hardly changed their fortunes. In fact, post-war Nigeria would be not so much divided by ethnicity as it was by the haves and the haves not. With various military dictators taking turns at the helm of power and oil prices flying sky high, Nigeria in the 70s, 80s and 90s became a perfect illustration of what political scientists referred to as a ‘rentier state’, a country which was solely dependent on bribes, rents and taxes paid by foreign businesses in exchange for raw natural resources.

With the oil money in full flow, Nigeria’s leaders really didn’t need the economy as a whole to perform in order to fill their pockets. Even better, they didn’t need to rely on the approval of an electorate either. Aside from a very brief period of democracy under president Shehu Shagari between 1979 and 1983, Nigeria would remain under the firm grip of a host of brutal dictators. From the end of the civil war right up until the creation of the Fourth Nigerian Republic in May 1999, the post-war Nigerian state basically had absolutely no civic contract with the Nigerian people and so the only relationship that mattered to Nigeria’s leaders, were their numerous opaque agreements with the multinational oil companies operating within the country’s oil sector.

Of all the casualties of this unholy post-war alliance between the Nigerian military state and big oil, the Ogoni people were arguably amongst the worst hit. With the full blessing of the Nigerian government, the Royal Dutch Shell oil company was authorised to explore and extract oil from Ogoniland. While this was a win-win deal for Nigeria’s military generals and the oil giant, Shell’s entry into the region quickly became nothing short of a living nightmare for the Ogoni people.

In a strongly worded letter sent to Shell’s headquarters in the city of Port Harcourt just 3 months after the end of the civil war, a group of Ogoni leaders and representatives raised concerns about the serious damage being done to their land by Shell. According to the letter, the Ogoni roadways had begun collapsing under the sheer weight of Shell’s machinery, and the fishing and farming industries which had been part and parcel of the Ogoni way of life for centuries were now under significant threat from oil-spills on their farmlands and waterways.

Responding to the allegations levied against them, Shell-BP swiftly dismissed the Ogoni’s claims as nothing more than a dishonest attempt to blackmail them into paying money to the Ogoni leadership and forcing Shell into building free local infrastructure.

But just two weeks after Shell-BP sent this response, a catastrophic incident occurred in the heart of Ogoniland. On the19 July 1970 an oil wellhead exploded, hurling fire and hot oil into the skies. Within a short period of time, the Ogoni’s main sources of drinking water were completely poisoned. Farmers began staying away from their own farms for fear of igniting fires, and those who were brave enough to return, found themselves waddling knee-deep in crude oil. For three long weeks, the oil spill continued unabated, contaminating everything it came into contact with, from the Ogoni’s air, to their land and their waterways.

Unfortunately, the July 1970 oil spill would be just one amongst a long list of similarly devastating incidents that would occur over the course of the next 3 decades. In fact, by the end of the 1990s, the total amount of crude oil spilled on Ogoni land would reportedly reach as high as a combined total of 2.5 million barrels.

Monitoring the oil spills from his offices in the city of Port Harcourt was the renowned Ogoni writer and film producer, Ken Saro-Wiwa. After a short career in government, Saro-Wiwa had risen to become arguably the most well-known Ogoni in all of Nigeria thanks to the success of his hit comedy show Basi and Company.

Centred around the life and trials of a small-time conman named Mr B and his various get rich quick schemes. The popularity of Saro-Wiwa’s comedy show was largely due to its light-hearted critique of the get-rich-quick mind-set that was prevalent at every level of Nigerian society.

Having grown sick and tired of the military government’s complicity in the devastation of his ancestral land, Saro-Wiwa spearheaded the creation of a pressure group known as the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (popularly known as MOSOP).

With the approval of the elders and traditional rulers of the Ogoni communities, Ken Saro-Wiwa drew up a Bill of Rights mandating greater financial and political autonomy for the Ogoni people. Saro-Wiwa then sent out his bill of rights to the military government alongside an urgent for protection against Shell’s devastation of their land and property.

But with Saro-Wiwa’s MOSOP group having virtually no real bargaining power, the Nigerian government’s response was to simply try to brush Saro-Wiwa aside and carry on with business as usual.

Deciding that more drastic measures needed to be taken, Saro-Wiwa organised a mass protest on the 3rd of January 1993 in which he mobilised an estimated one third of the entire Ogoni population to come out in peaceful protest against Shell’s exploitation and the Nigerian government’s betrayal of Ogoniland.

Although the January 1993 protest did a lot to raise awareness about the plight of the Ogoni people, the demonstrations would have no immediate impact on the Shell’s operations.

In the weeks following the protest, Shell continued to expand its operations in Ogoni land, buying up more concessions, digging through farmlands, and devastating more Ogoni communities with the full blessing and protection of the Nigerian military.

Taking matters into their own hands, Saro-Wiwa’s MOSOP quickly adopted a more radical approach, by rallying Ogoni youth to sabotage Shell’s infrastructure and intimidate their workers. Within a relatively short period of time, Saro-Wiwa’s MOSOP had succeeded in forcing Shell to pause its operations in Ogoniland.

But with a significant chunk of the Nigerian military government’s income stream now at serious risk due to MOSOP’s activities in Ogoniland, Ken Saro-Wiwa quickly went from being a mere irritation to the single biggest internal threat to the Nigerian government.

Moving swiftly and decisively, the military government led by General Ibrahim Babangida hastily announced its infamous Decree №29 which mandated a death penalty for anyone ‘uttering words’, flying a flag or publishing material that was capable of causing violence or encouraging ethnic nationalism. The Babangida regime also reportedly deployed a special task force into Ogoniland to carry out undercover operations aimed at manufacturing tribal wars in Ogoniland to use them as a cover for the mass killing of MOSOP members.

Posing as native Ogoni tribesmen, undercover military officers would allegedly ambush and kill members of neighbouring tribes in the hope of inciting reciprocal attacks. And once the tribal conflict eventually arose, the Nigerian government would then deploy uniformed forces to carry out large-scale killings of MOSOP members in Ogoniland under the guise of peace keeping missions.

These covert military operations would allegedly continue up until November 1993 when General Sani Abacha replaced General Babaginda as Nigeria’s military head of state. Under Abacha’s rule, the Nigerian military government adopted a more direct approach, immediately deploying 400 military officers into Ogoniland with direct instructions to attend MOSOP demonstrations and open fire on activists whenever possible.

But notwitstanding the increasing number of casualties under Abacha’s rule, Saro-Wiwa continued to encourage resistance and inspired more and more Ogoni youth to join his movement.

Saro-Wiwa’s fervent desire to continue in the fight despite the shoot-to-kill policy adopted by the Nigerian government would ultimately lead to division within the MOSOP leadership. With more and more people being killed at MOSOP protests, some Ogoni elders began to denounce Saro-Wiwa as being too militant and called for MOSOP to engage in peaceful negotiations with the Abacha regime.

Taking full advantage of the Ogoni’s internal squabble, the nigerian government would allegedly move to orchestrate one of the most cold-blooded conspiracies in Nigerian history.

On 21 May 1994, four Ogoni chiefs were seized during a meeting of elders and brutally murdered by a mob of angry youth. Although Saro-Wiwa was not actually in Ogoniland on the day of the murders, he was arrested on suspicion of the killings as all 4 of the deceased chiefs were public critics of Saro-Wiwa’s activism.

Although Saro-Wiwa completely denied the charges, he was imprisoned for over a year before he was eventually brought to face trial in front of a special tribunal.

With a panel of judges allegedly handpicked by General Sani Abacha himself and many of the prosecution witnesses later admitting to having been bribed to give false testimony, Saro-Wiwa was tried in front of a textbook kangaroo court.

Despite the relatively large international coverage and the global outcry against his trial, Ken Saro-Wiwa was ultimately found guilty and sentenced to death alongside 8 other leading members

of MOSOP. The Ogoni Nine as they would later be known, were executed by the Abacha regime on 10 November 1995.

After four unsuccessful attempts due to faulty equipment, Saro-Wiwa finally succumbed to death by hanging under the close watch of General Abacha’s executioners. His immortal last words were reported as “Lord take my soul, but the struggle continues.”

The execution of the Ogoni Nine would provoke international condemnation of the Abacha regime by United Nations with arms embargoes imposed on Nigeria by the European Union and the United States. British Prime Minister John Major called the executions a “judicial murder” while South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and Kenya’s Daniel Arap Moi all called for Nigeria’s suspension from the Commonwealth of Nations.

But after all was said and done, the international outcry and sanctions eventually subsided and the Abacha regime quickly returned to business as usual. With Saro-Wiwa neutralised, Shell was finally able to return to full production capacity and thanks to its control of Nigeria’s free-flowing oil revenue, the Abacha regime would ultimately go on to become perhaps the most prolific kleptocratic Nigerian regime of all time. In fact, Abacha’s government was so successful at looting that even over 2 decades since his death in 1999, no one knows exactly how much money was stolen during his time.

The Ken Saro-Wiwa story is without a doubt one of the great tragedies in Nigerian history. But while his life may have been brutally cut short, his last words will forever continue to resonate in the hearts and minds of the ever growing number of Nigerian youth that continue in the seemingly never ending struggle against the Nigerian government and its treasonous alliance with big oil.