Ken Saro-Wiwa was imprisoned in 1994 by order of Nigeria's then dictator Sani Abacha. He had strongly defended the rights of the Ogoni people of the oil-rich Niger delta and criticised the governments partnership with Shell. Despite widespread international protests, Ken Saro-Wiwa, with other eight Ogoni rights activists, was hanged after a show trial in Port Harcourt, on 10 November 1995.
Remember Saro-Wiwa is a project to commemorate the executed writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and his eight Ogoni colleagues on the tenth anniversary of their execution. It aims to use the event to spotlight the continuing crisis in the Niger delta. Ken Wiwa, Ken Livingstone and Anita Roddick will host a launch at Londons City Hall on Tuesday 22 March
Many people still remember how they felt when Ken Saro-Wiwa was judicially murdered. Some of us have spent the period trying to forget as a strategy to mask our pain but in the end you come to realise, as the Czech novelist Milan Kundera wrote: the struggle of humanity against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.
Those of us involved back then vowed that Kens death must not be in vain. Shell came under intense pressure for its role in the executions and General Abachas military dictatorship was ostracised by the international community.
But ten years on, and six years into a democratic and civilian administration, Ken Saro-Wiwa is still described as a murderer in Nigerias legal records. My family and I are still struggling to give him a proper and humane burial. Not one single member of the Nigerian military regime has been prosecuted for their crimes against my father or the thousands of Ogoni whom they forcibly displaced, murdered, raped and traumatised.
The writer Chuks Illoegbunam once posed the question: what does the death of Ken Saro-Wiwa mean? His answer was: It means that nothing has changed. Or as my father once wrote, the only wrongdoers are those who do no wrong.
My father prophesied his own death in his last play On the Death of Ken Saro-Wiwa, penned a few days before the hangman came for him. His final statement to the tribunal that convicted him was equally prescient:
We all stand before history. I and my colleagues are not the only ones on trial. Shell is here on trial and it is as well that it is represented by counsel said to be holding a watching brief. The company has, indeed ducked this particular trial, but its day will surely come and the lessons learnt here may prove useful to it for there is no doubt in my mind that the ecological war that the company has waged in the Niger delta will be called to question sooner than later, and the crimes of that war duly punished. The crime of the companys dirty wars against the Ogoni people will also be punished.
On trial also is the Nigerian nation, its present rulers and those who assist them. Any nation which can do to the weak and disadvantaged what the Nigerian nation has done to the Ogoni people, loses a claim to independence and to freedom from outside influence.
I predict that the denouement of the riddle of the Niger delta will soon come. The agenda is being set at this trial. Whether the peaceful way I have favoured will prevail depends on what the oppressor decides, what signals is sent out to the waiting public.
Today, those who still feel the pain and injustice of my fathers death are gathering to pressure the Nigerian government, Shell and the international community to honour its commitments to Ken, the Ogoni and the people of the Niger Delta, and to uphold the recommendations of the UNs Rapporteur to Nigeria in 1996, and the efforts of the UN Commission on Human Rights.
We do not have adequate mechanisms to ensure that corporations are held accountable for ecological and social crimes and for facilitating and assisting torture, murder and crimes against humanity. We need binding legislation to ensure that corporations can be held to account for their actions because they have forfeited the right to self-regulation. We want the world to recognise that corporate immunity is a grave and gathering threat to good governance, peace and security around the world.
But the flavour of this years commemoration is not about retributive justice. In the spirit of my fathers emphasis that he was a man of peace, with creative ideas, we are dedicating this years memorial to the idea of creative justice.
What is creative justice? It means that all stakeholders must play their role in building strong, secure and just societies. My father is often misrepresented in many ways but none irritates me more than when people forget that he was a businessman who recognised the genius and possibilities of business as a transformative agent in society.
It is not too late. Though violence appears to be the endgame in the western Niger delta, the eastern Niger delta and Ogoni remain relatively calm. I firmly believe there is still a window, a shrinking window, to present an alternative vision for sustainable development in Africa.
That story starts now with the Living Memorial project being launched in London on 22 March. We need initiatives that inspire, engage and provoke and the Living Memorial aims to do just that. It will keep my fathers vision alive, the potential of a brave new world and the notion of creative justice as an agent for positive change.
This is an edited version of a speech by Ken Wiwa at the Remember Ken Saro-Wiwa commemoration on 22 March in London.
With thanks to Lorne Stockman.
