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The federal Nigerian government returned none of the revenues it derived from
this oil to Ogoniland, which is deeply impoverished, without proper schools or
medical facilities. In 1990 Saro-Wiwa, the son of an Ogoni Chief, started a
protest movement - both for a share of the oil-revenues and
against environmental degradation - which culminated in a peaceful
demonstration of 300,000 (or 60 per cent) of the Ogoni. Saro-Wiwa was an
extremely dangerous opponent for the military regime because oil is Nigeria's
largest export and oil revenues are all-important to the economy. Indisputably
non-violent, Saro-Wiwa argued the Ogoni case with logic and passion but - most dangerous of all -
without ever losing his sense of humour. A small man, he has a basso profundo
laugh, which somehow forces even his bitterest opponents to join in; and I
shall never forget the way he shook with laughter as he
described how Ogoni money (as he called it) was diverted into building
extravagant presidential and ministerial palaces in Nigeria's new federal
capital, Abuja. But the fact that the soldiers were unable to answer
Saro-Wiwa's arguments was, as he very well knew, very risky for him. They were
likely to reply in the only way they
knew: they framed him. When a mob of his supporters then killed four alleged
opponents of Saro-Wiwa's movement, Saro-Wiwa was arrested (for the second time)
and charged with treason, incitement to murder and murder itself. Saro-Wiwa has
been held for nine months in solitary confinement and is currently undergoing
trial. If found guilty by the military tribunal, he could be shot. Though it is
doubtful whether the regime would do anything so foolish as to execute
Saro-Wiwa, it might just feel that it needed to do so to demonstrate its
determination to survive and its independence of world opinion. Saro-Wiwa is a
remarkable man.
Born in 1941, he was educated at Umuahia Government College (the school also
attended by the novelists Chinua Achebe and Elechi Amadi and the poet
Christopher Okigbo) and then at University College, Ibadan, from which he graduated in English.
His experience of a traditional British education gave him a deep respect
for it (he sent both his sons to Eton), now all but lost in its country of
origin. In 1970 he submitted a radio play to the BBC which was accepted. But
his literary ambitions were thwarted for a time, first by the Nigerian civil
war (in which he served
on the federal side) and then by the need to earn a living to support his
family. He became a grocer for a while, and it is typical of him that he talks
of this period of his life not with embarrassment or shame, as many writers
would surely do, but with affection and humour. He says - surely with reason -
that there is a great
deal to be learnt about human nature by providing people with their groceries.
In the 1980s, however, he devoted himself to literature. In 1985, he published
his first novel himself, setting up a company to do so (it has just been
reissued by Heinemann in their African Writers' series). Entitled
Sozaboy: A Novel in Rotten English, it is undoubtedly a masterpiece of African
literature. A Bildungsroman, it is the story of a quarter-educated village boy
who enters the civil war because his young wife Agnes thinks that military
uniforms look smart and manly. He ends
up fighting on both sides without ever knowing what the fight was about, and in
the process loses everyone dear to him. What is remarkable about this book is
that it is told through the eyes of a village boy in language which is
half-pidgin and half-English without a trace of condescension on the
part of the author. The language is both poetic and accessible; both romantic
and credible. It could only have been invented by a man with a deep love of the
English language (which Saro-Wiwa acknowledges) and a genuine sympathy for
people less educated than himself. The book reaches a moving
conclusion:
"And as I was going, I was just thinking how the war have spoiled my town Dukana
. . . killed my mama and my wife Agnes, my beautiful new wife Agnes . . . and
now it have made me like person wey get leprosy because I have no town again.
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A writer on trial for his life. Anthony Daniels recalls his last meeting with
Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Nigerian author and activist accused of treason and murder.
THE LAST time I was on my way to visit the Nigerian writer Ken Saro-Wiwa - who
is now on trial for his life - at his office on the Aba Road in Port Harcourt,
an appeal was broadcast over the radio for the authorities to remove the naked
corpse which had lain in the Aba Road for the last few days and was now
swelling and smelling horribly. When I arrived at his office, a hundred yards
away from the corpse, we talked of the cornucopia of subject- matter which
presented itself every day to writers in Nigeria. For example,
a scandal had just broken which might one day provide Saro-Wiwa with a theme
for a novel: a confidence trickster had announced to the public that he would
pay fabulous monthly interest to those who deposited money with him and, for
the first few months, kept to his word: using new
deposits to pay interest on the old. When his scheme collapsed, as it was
inevitable that it should, everyone - from market women to state governors -
was found to have believed in his promises of quick wealth. As a metaphor for
the get-quick-rich ethos of Africa's most populous country, it could scarcely
be bettered.
Alas, Saro-Wiwa felt there were more important matters than literature in hand.
He was born in Ogoniland, in the Niger Delta, whose fishing creeks and farmland
have been polluted beyond recognition by Royal Dutch Shell's extraction of oil.
Reported by Anthony Daniels in Sunday Telegraph March 5, 1995.
