S2 EP1: Abacha’s Offer

That was the time we began to talk about the NADECO exit route. Everybody knows how you cannot escape from Nigeria through Igboho or through Badagry. You can’t check his ability for corruption. You cannot check it. And he was the arrowhead of corruption. Even the money he stole we have not recovered all of them. And each time they release them, incrementally, I usually make the joke, we thank our father in heaven for sending us some money. And Nigeria became a pariah state, isolated internationally.

I summarized those days, those times, as I said, it was a terrible time to be alive. I know I was kind of exaggerating, but you know, you have to exaggerate if you want to capture the essence of some things. And that was the only way I could think of it. It was a terrible time to be alive for so many reasons. And if you’ve read my first novel, you understand exactly because it’s set in that milieu, the 1990s in Nigeria. And if I can think of one thing that epitomizes for me the whole Sanni Abacha years, it will be the killing of Ken Saro-Wiwa, you know, which is very relevant to what we’re talking about now. When a dictator decided to throw aside all the norms that govern modern societies, the rule of law and all these things, and just hanged Ken Saro-Wiwa. We’re taking him through the process of some kangaroo justice, and hanged him just because he was protesting the environmental injustices that were happening in the Niger Delta. So for me, that summarizes the sunny Abacha years. So there’s total disregard for human rights, total disregard for democracy, democratic norms, total disregard for what the world thought about Nigeria because we were kicked out of the Commonwealth of Nations.

It looks like one of the worst things that happened to Nigeria.

One of the things that made us realize how brutal Abacha could be was how he handled the Ogoni crisis as compared to how Babangida handled it, you know. There’s this conversation that, if what had happened happened during Babangida’s time, would Ken Saro-Wiwa be alive till today. It’s debatable, but those conversations have been had, you know.

At the time, we are always hoping for the best for Nigeria and whoever comes in, whether military or just civilian. You just think, okay, try, for us, you know. We’ve been through an era in the 80s where it was just coup after coup after coup. So we were thinking maybe a little bit of stability here with this man, Abacha,. But he was different in that he went after the press. It was just a surprise, because… you know, pen and gun, who’s going to win. It didn’t seem logical. His rule did not seem logical. And in visiting Port Harcourt, where I go straight away, because that’s where my family were, I noticed that on Aba road, towards the university campus, Port Harcourt university campus, someone who was a little challenged had painted words on walls, lampposts, huts, trash or whatever. But it was perfect text, because he was obviously someone that had a breakdown of some kind, and he did perfect graffiti. It seemed like such a rebellious statement to the government at the time, because they were cutting what people could say. They were cutting down on our freedoms. And this person who was having a breakdown just covered the street in words that went on for miles, and I just thought visually, that was exciting for me, thinking, well, this man obviously doesn’t care and is trying to embrace the freedoms that one can have in one’s own country. And that is to speak out with letters. So at the time, in Nigeria, there was fear and repression and little outbursts from people, even madmen that I saw as an artist…

You’re probably wondering why we chose to start this season talking about General Sani Abacha, the despot who ruled Nigeria from 1993 until his mysterious death in 1998. The short answer is this: if we really want to understand what Ken Saro-Wiwa, the protagonist of our story this season, was up against, we have to understand Abacha. 

What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? During much of Abacha’s regime, this was the dynamic between Abacha and Saro-Wiwa. But at one point Abacha seemed to give way, to extend an olive branch. In 1994, around two months into his rule, he invited Saro-Wiwa to become Nigeria’s oil minister. Can you guess Saro-Wiwa’s response?

You remember a recent joke when they asked an activist appointed into the Buhari government, that you used to be an activist, what is happening? And he said, You don’t talk when you are eating. That you are already chopping.

Abacha’s decision wasn’t random. And when it came to politics or government work, Saro-Wiwa was no tyro. In the next episode, we’ll talk a bit more about Saro-Wiwa’s political career. For now though: one interesting thing that came up during my research for this podcast is that Abacha and Saro-Wiwa were actually quite close. According to Saro-Wiwa’s son, Ken Junior, at some point, they were even neighbours and lived in Port Harcourt in a neighbourhood called Nzimiro Street.

Earlier this year, when I visited Port Harcourt, I went to Nzimiro Street.

It is a stately street. In his memoir, In the Shadow of a Saint, Ken Junior explains that in the 1970s, the area around Nzimiro Street was known as Amadi Flats. I’m going to read how Ken Junior described it: 

 ‘Amadi Flats was an exclusive area that housed the families of expats, army officers, wealthy businessmen and government officials. As a commissioner in the state government, my father enjoyed the privileges of office: a chauffeur-driven Mercedes, the house and a pampered lifestyle with ser-vants.’ 

Despite the many years that have passed since the Saro-Wiwas lived on Nzimiro Street, I definitely got the vibe Ken Junior described when I visited. The Saro-Wiwa family lived at number 11. The house I met was a blue mansion, with the prominent front pillars typical of Nigerian stately architecture–a google maps street view search I did later suggested the building was under some construction as of January 2020. I couldn’t tell if the construction was some renovation work or if an entirely new building had replaced the Saro-Wiwa home. 

Ken Junior, described their building as ‘a colonial mansion in the middle of the city.’ I saw several mansions on that street that fit his description. He also recalled playing as a child with a kid named Ibrahim, who lived next door at number 9. The building I found next to number 11 was a high security military residence coated in red and gold. Later Ken Junior would reveal that Ibrahim was Abacha’s son.

People also tend to forget that Ken Saro-Wiwa and General Sani Abacha used to be very close. In fact, the houses in Port Harcourt were not far away from one another, but their backgrounds were very different. Saro-Wiwa, a writer, producer. Call him an intellectual. Abacha was not.

Visiting Nzimiro, learning how close Abacha and Saro-Wiwa were, I had questions: what happened to that relationship? How did their story evolve from one of neighbours, to the slippery tale of a ministerial offer and to the harrowing story of an unlawful, brutal execution?

Hello and welcome to The Republic, a podcast about pivotal African figures and historical events. I’m your host, Wale Lawal. In seven episodes, I’m going to walk you through one of the biggest miscarriages of justice in Nigeria’s history: the Abacha regime’s execution of the Ogoni 9 in 1995. To experience what happened, we’ll explore the life and legacy of Ken Saro-Wiwa, and the significance of the Ogoni struggle against oil companies and their environmental degradation of the Niger Delta.

To understand the significance of Abacha’s ministerial offer to Saro-Wiwa, we need to first realize where Nigeria was in the 90s. We had just emerged from the 80s, where a structural adjustment programme the IMF recommended had put us in a deep economic crisis. Our real GDP was falling by 2.5 per cent annually in the early 1990s, unemployment levels had reached 3.5 million, and foreign debt had increased to $30 billion. At the outset of the 90s, all Nigerians could see were perilous times.

Like many Nigerians, I felt frustrated and saddened by what is happening to us. We’ve had our independence for more than 20 years. By Third World standards, we have a well-educated elite. We have a productive farming economy. We have minerals. And we discovered a few years ago that we had oil, a lot of oil. Yet today we are importing food that we should be growing. We are a bankrupt nation. And we have an international reputation for large-scale corruption. Many of our people are unhappy, and some even angry. What has gone wrong?

The voice you’ve just heard is a young Onyeka Onwenu, the celebrated musician who passed away earlier this year. In 1984 when the NTA-BBC documentary she featured in came out, Onyeka was a broadcaster gifted at communicating the feelings of everyday Nigerians. Like Onyeka, throughout our modern history, Nigerians have often found themselves asking what has gone wrong? And she was right to ask:

In the 80s, the Nigerian economy was majorly dependent on oil revenue, crippled by debt and grappling with plummeting exchange rates. According to the Central Bank of Nigeria, over 97 per cent of Nigeria’s export revenue came from oil. Nigeria had racked up 56.6 per cent of its GDP in public debt. And between 1984 and 1993, the naira’s value against the dollar would fall from $1 to 0.76 kobo to $1 to 22.05 naira! Things would get so bad that a 1990 opinion piece from the New York Times led with the headline, ‘In Nigeria, Voiceless Victims of Debt’. Sound familiar?

In our first season we talked about how Nigeria failed to transition to a civilian government in 1993 after the head of state, General Ibrahim Badamasi Babangida (aka IBB), annulled the June 12 presidential election. Shortly after, IBB created an interim government led by Chief Ernest Shonekan. We also talked about how Shonekan’s government was unpopular and was quickly deposed by General Sani Abacha in a bloodless coup. 

On becoming head of state, Abacha immediately annulled the 1989 constitution which paved the way for the 1993 presidential election. 

In 1994, when presidential candidate and rumoured winner, Moshood Kashimawo Olawale Abiola proclaimed himself president of Nigeria, Abacha had him arrested. That same year, Abacha instituted two decrees that gave his government absolute power. The decrees placed his government above the courts and gave his government the right to detain anyone without trial for up to three months. A New York Times article from September 1994, titled, ‘Nigerian Military Ruler Assumes Absolute Power’, suggests the decrees were not well received. The article said, and I’m going to quote this:

Democracy advocates responded to General Abacha’s decrees with frustration.’They unfold an era in which no Nigerian is sure of his or her freedom or sanctity of life,’ said Gani Fawehinmi, a lawyer who is defending dozens of jailed dissidents. General Abacha closed three newspaper and magazine groups, including the most influential and respected in the country, The Guardian of Lagos. The others are Concord, which Mr Abiola owns, and Punch.

The Abacha government had to deal with the ongoing Ogoni Crisis, which IBB and Shonekan had failed to manage. As part of his efforts to repress dissent in the Niger Delta, and with oil increasingly important to his regime in 1994, Abacha established the Rivers State Inland Security, a notorious force that would leave nightmares in Ogoniland for decades to come.

But how did we get here? The short answer is crude oil. And the story goes as far back as the 1930s, when Nigeria was a British colony. Britain was broke after the first world war and needed money; so it sought more ways of extracting wealth from its colonies. In Nigeria, the British colonial government gave licenses to a consortium of two oil companies, British Petroleum and Shell D’arcy aka Shell. The colonial licenses allowed these companies to start looking for crude oil, an increasingly valuable commodity in international markets.

Oil is sort of slow even though it’s discovered and they begin to do exploration and there is commerce around it. It really wasn’t until wars in the 20th century that great powers began to see the significance of it. And it really started late in World War I, because technology changed so much in World War I and they needed oil for lots of transportation. It was the first time countries were trying to extend its influence and send its soldiers so far. So, gradually, in World War I, they started seeing the need for oil. And then particularly the British Navy decided to shift from coal powering its ships to oil. With the end of World War I, and following that, and, certainly, by World War II, there became a great interest in oil, supplies of oil, and it really being the fuel that was in the engine of industrial development then.

BP and Shell had already found oil in Eket, a community in present-day Akwa Ibom State, in southern Nigeria. But considering the high costs of oil extraction, the oil they found was not commercially viable. Later in this season, we’ll talk about the economics of oil but, for now, just know when the volume of oil is high enough and can give companies a profit after extraction, they say the oil is of commercial quantity.  

Decades later, in 1956, Shell discovered oil of commercial quantity in Oloibiri, a community in present-day Bayelsa State, about 420 kilometres (west) of Eket. I should note here that the location of the first discovery is still a debated subject. Some historians have argued that Otuagbagi in Bayelsa was the first site for crude oil discovery which is 9.5 kilometres from Oloibiri.

What we do know for sure is that over time more oil wells were found in Afam (150 kilometres east of Oloibiri) and Bomu (190 kilometres east of Oloibiri) in Ogoni. This initial discovery sparked hope among many Nigerians as we approached our independence.

Di happiness become Ogele wey we do. Then the Shell say dem go make dis our place to be like where dem come from London. Di elders of this community dat time, na big Ogele we take so tey we go see dat Well One.

By now, the colonial government had given oil licences to a few other oil companies to operate in Nigeria. These included three American companies: Mobil in 1955, Tenneco in 1960 and Gulf Oil (which we now know as Chevron) in 1961; Agip, an Italian company, also got a licence in 1962. 

Of all these firms, Shell seemed to have the lion share of oil opportunities. When I spoke to historian, Professor Toyin Falola, he explained that,

The British had imposed a series of regulations on shipping, on foreign reserves, on the military, on security, including a dominant concession to Shell. In other words, they said, without even knowing the quantity of that oil, they already gave extensive concession rights to Shell and some other oil companies, so that by the time we knew this extensive nature, that contract was already in place.

The continued explorations across southern Nigeria led up to the Oil boom of the 1970s. Nigeria became incredibly rich from its oil exports. Even in the immediate aftermath of the Nigerian civil war, which ran from 1967 to 1970, Nigeria’s coffers were overflowing.

Nigeria ran the first international war in Africa. They ran that war without getting broke. War is supposed to get you broke. Europe has not fully survived from the damages of the Second World War. It crashes the economy, and it crashes their global power, the rise of the Soviet Union and the rise of the US, Nigeria survived that. We didn’t have to borrow money.

Nigeria had a lot of money. And a chief beneficiary of Nigeria’s oil boom was its growing middle class.

By 1973, which was the peak of the creation of the Nigerian middle class, that money was such that education was available. The people you now call middle class, like school teachers and nurses, could buy cars. Volkswagen was N1300. And Gowon declared a statement that he later regretted: ‘Nigeria does not have problems with money, it is what to do with it that is the issue.’

In the 1970s, the Nigerian Military government under General Yakubu Gowon made the move to nationalize oil production through the indigenization decree. The Nigerian National Oil Corporation (NNOC) was established in 1971 by the Nigerian government and it aimed to oversee the development and regulation of the petroleum industry. It was the first attempt by the country to actively participate in the oil industry. By 1977, the NNOC merged with the Federal Ministry of Mines & Power and became the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) which we are more familiar with today. This led to a series of joint ventures between the government and the oil companies, ensuring the government held over 50 per cent of the ventures.

That was a lot so let’s pause here for a second. The indigenization decree is an essential part of this story but it’s pretty technical. So I asked Funbi Akinsanya who wrote this episode with me to help unpack what the Indigenization decree entailed. Over to you Funbi.

Alright. So the indigenization decree of 1972 was developed to help Nigeria achieve economic independence. Twelve years post-independence many foreign firms were operating in Nigeria and making a lot of money with next to no Nigerian beneficiaries. Gowon saw this and thought, hmm? What if we transfer ownership of foreign investments and industries to Nigerians? When you think about it, the logic was strategic: Nigerians would be employed and productive plus richer and who knows maybe they might even like the military government. Populism 101. 

By 1977, this decree was expanded to three major schedules. Schedule 1 mandated certain types of companies like fashion houses must be 100 per cent owned by Nigerians. Schedule 2 required that Nigerians must have at least 60 per cent of majority ownership and applied to banks. Schedule 3 stated that Nigerians must have at least 40 per cent of ownership in businesses like breweries. Hope this helps! Back to you Wale. 

Thanks, Funbi!

Chimeka Garricks is a lawyer and the author of the 2004 novel Tomorrow Died Yesterday, a modern classic about oil in the Niger Delta. When I spoke to him about the Niger Delta, he made an interesting point about how the military government also used policies like the Land Use Act to strategically annex all of Nigeria’s resources, becoming the owners while everyone else became renters.

The Nigerian constitution, even right from time, all the military constitutions that were there. They vest all control of oil resources in the federal government. The Nigerian Land Use Act, which was enacted in 1978 vest control of all land in the state governments. So basically, in Nigeria, what you own is a certificate of occupancy… what the government gives you rights to lease. It’s just like a lease of the land.

Owning all land resources automatically gave the government oversight into critical industries like the oil industry. You’d think this would enable the government to ensure that oil companies followed its regulations. In an ideal world that would be the case. But Nigeria in the 1970s, under military control, was far from ideal.

Often, when we talk about international oil companies, or IOCs as most people in the industry call them, there’s an inherent paradox. Earlier I mentioned that the Indigenization Decree is an essential part of the story. That’s because in Nigeria at least, IOCs can be even more Nigerian than they are international. Chimeka explained this better.

What most people don’t understand is that the Nigerian government owns majority stakes in most of the oil companies. So I think in most of the oil joint venture companies, the Nigerian government owns up to 60 per cent. In SPDC, I think it’s about 55 per cent of the joint ventures. So when you are saying, it’s this company. In many ways, it is actually your government.

Chimeka’s comment made me think about the levels of government collusion and corruption Nigeria’s oil industry has faced over the years. Even today, there are still prominent scandals, which show that we show our very persistent institutional issues. Just look at the recently closed P&ID case. For over a decade, Nigeria and the Irish engineering company had been in a legal battle. P&ID claimed Nigeria had failed to honour a gas supply and  processing agreement and asked for damages worth $11.5 billion, a figure that could nearly bankrupt Nigeria. For context, as of 2023, the height of the legal battle, Nigeria had less than $33 billion in its reserves. We only escaped because, according to Premium Times, in 2023 London’s High Court ruled that P&ID got the contract after paying bribes to senior officials of the petroleum ministry. Phew! Abi?

We begin with reactions to Nigeria’s landmark victory against Process and Industrial Development Limited, President Bola Tinubu has applauded the judgment of Judge Robin Knowles of the Business and Property Court in London for prioritizing the merits of the case above all other considerations. The President also noted that the victory is not for Nigeria alone, but for Africa and the developing world at large. Judge Knowles dismissed the $11.5 billion value of the award and accumulated interest previously won by P&ID over a failed 2010 deal to allegedly build a gas processing plant on the grounds that the award was obtained by fraud.

What about the recent saga between Dangote Refineries, NNPC and the Nigerian Government? Here’s Aliko Dangote himself on his experience with the oil mafia:

I knew that there would be a fight. But I didn’t know that the mafia in oil is stronger than the mafia in drugs.

Through the 70s and 80s Nigeria continued to thrive at extracting and exporting crude oil. But as Nigeria’s government focused its efforts on crude oil, agricultural exports of cash crops fell tremendously and gradually became disregarded entirely for ‘Black Gold’.

The truth of the matter is that three, four years ago, I built that house for approximately a hundred naira. You will get fifty thousand naira for rent in a year at a minimum of four, five years in advance. So with the first lot of payment—just clear this loan and pay its interest in advance and it’s still substantially in hand—you can start another house, or you can buy yourself a holiday house in Knightsbridge. You know, it’s typical.

Contrary to Gowon’s promise that indigenization would spread wealth to everyday Nigerians, Nigeria’s oil wealth was only shared amongst a select few: basically government officials and political elites. While those who lived in the oil-rich regions were left impoverished. Oil which seemed to have promised prosperity for all quickly became a blessing for a select few and a curse for the masses. 

The novelist, Helon Habila, wrote the 2010 novel, Oil on Water, which has been described as a work of petrofiction, the literary genre that explores the interactions between oil, humanity and society. When I spoke to Helon about how these three things interact in Nigeria, he explained that:

Well, whenever there’s big money, there’s always going to be corruption, you know. And it starts from different levels. From the politicians who collude with the oil companies to rape the environment and the people and kind of perverting the sensibility of the people, the morality, if you like, of the community.

Without proper systems in place, the discovery of crude oil led to a gradual degradation of the environment within Niger Delta. But crude oil did not act alone. Oil extraction quickly became synonymous with operational negligence without any compensation to locals who lost their livelihoods as a result of the environmental harms. Professor Falola put this in stronger words.

Oil became blood money.

Not surprisingly, from the 1970s into the 1990s, there was rising discontent within the Niger Delta. Members of Niger Delta communities made several attempts for dialogue with the government. They reached out to both the military government and the brief Shehu Shagari civilian government to address the environmental issues they faced, but their attempts were ignored. To them, the government’s interests were more aligned with the interests of oil companies than with those of the people who actually lived in oil-producing communities and had been suffering the consequences of under-regulated oil extraction. 

According to Helon:

It’s about the environment. It’s about oil. These are international issues. These are issues that know no boundaries. It’s about multinational corporations trying to make a profit off poor people of African countries, just because they want to fill their pockets with billions and billions of dollars. Even if they destroy the environment in the process, they don’t care about it.

By the 1990s, oil became the majority revenue source for Nigeria – about 90 percent of all export revenue came from oil, according to the Central Bank of Nigeria.

Yet, the 1990s were far from the makeshift prosperity of the 70s and underperformed even compared to the 80s. In the last season, we explained how with the annulment of the election of 1993, Nigeria found itself in political flux. IBB, the military ruler from 1985 to 1993 left office, delegating power to Chief Shonekan to form an interim government. But Shonekan’s government struggled to contain the economic crisis left over from the 80s, and the widespread resentment Nigerians had following the controversial June 12 elections. 

The Niger Delta especially was at a boiling point. Communities began changing tactics from seeking dialogue with the government to taking to the streets to protest the continuous degradation of their environment and living conditions. 

In the midst of these failings, Abacha who was serving as the Minister of Defence saw an opportunity not only to seize power but also to consolidate Nigeria’s oil wealth. And what is greed if not a hungry beast?

A government of a military regime like Sanni Abacha’s that does not care, doesn’t care about its people, doesn’t care about development, has no vision whatsoever and will ruthlessly maintain its power.

Abacha as a person was the kind of guy who was a dictator’s dictator. He took being a dictator seriously.

Who was General Sani Abacha? 

Sani Abacha was born on 20 September 1943, in Kano State, Nigeria, to Kanuri parents. His early education was also in Kano. After independence, Abacha joined the Nigerian Military Training College in Kaduna. In 1963, he was commissioned as Second Lieutenant after he attended Mons Defense Officers’ Cadet Training College in Aldershot, England. He fought in the civil war, where he served as a platoon and battalion commander. By 1969, he had risen in rank to Major.

After the war, according to his obituary in The New York Times, he continued his military training in the UK and in the US in Monterey, California. By 1983, he had become Brigadier and was appointed to Nigeria’s Supreme Military Council in the same year. He became more visible in the political space as he supported the coup to overthrow Shagari. In fact he announced the coup that toppled the Shagari government in 1983. That was Abacha’s first introduction to the Nigerian public and international community. 

The 1983 coup ushered in General Muhammadu Buhari as head of state. Under the Buhari government, Abacha became the General Commanding Officer of the Second Mechanised Division. Two years later after IBB deposed Buhari in a coup, Abacha served as Chief of Army Staff, a role he held until 1990. Then, he became Chief of Defence Staff which IBB turned into Minister of Defence, a position he held from until 1993, when he led his own coup against the Shonekan government on November 17. 

By the time Abacha took over, he was a consummate military man who had been part of three military coups between 1983 and 1993. He was considered very diligent, and showed a borderline obsessive interest in power. After all, he was the first Military Head of State, to have attained full military rank of General without skipping a single rank. He seemed to have been quietly bidding his time to seize power.

The state executive councils are dissolved. The brigade commanders are to take over from the governors in their states until administrators are appointed. Where there are no brigade commanders, the commissioners of police in the states are to take over. All local government stands dissolved. The directors of personnel are to take over the administration of the local government until administrators are appointed.

With his ascension to power, Abacha made promises of ensuring a constitutional reform and smooth transition to civilian rule.

The constitutional conference will also recommend the method of forming parties which will lead to the actual recognition of political parties formed by the people. While the conference is on, the organization and the reform of the following major institutions will be carried out: the military, the police, the customs, the judiciary, NITEL, NNPC, NEPA, the banking industry and our higher institutions of learning.

Even MKO Abiola had faith that Abacha would give him back the presidential mandate he had won a few months earlier. Faith Abacha soon squashed.

Curiously, Abiola also trusted him, to some degree, because the way Abiola was reading the situation was that Abacha would hand over power to him, which he did not do, a kind of miscalculation.

On the surface, Abacha seemed to have the interest of the nation at heart in his first few weeks. But Nigeria quickly came to know his cruel iron hand.

Under the Abacha regime if you didn’t play ball for the carrot you were often hit hard with the stick to maintain his desired order. Civil society organizations like the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) and publications like The Guardian were often under threat as they actively spoke out against the Abacha regime and questioned the legitimacy of his government. Many of his opponents found themselves imprisoned, exiled; many ended up dead.

He engaged in political repression and human rights. When I was in the US then, people were afraid of him. Even when you are speaking on the phone, your family members will be warning you not to talk about Abacha. All oppositions, he killed them. Very, very draconian, media censorship, closing newspaper offices, arresting editors, and many fled.

In July 1994, The National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), followed by the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria, called for a strike protesting Abiola’s arrest and the deteriorating conditions in the oil industry. The Nigerian Labour Congress also joined the strike. This had a profound impact on the Nigerian economy as the nation was at a standstill. According to a 1995 article published in The Africa Fund the strike shut down Nigeria’s crude production by 20 per cent. In response, Abacha demanded the removal of the leaders of these unions such as Frank Kokori, the General Secretary of NUPENG, and had them arrested without trial.

This regime will be found humane and decisive. We will not condone nor tolerate any act of indiscipline. Any attempt to test our will will be decisively dealt with.

In 1995, The Washington Post aptly captured the Nigerian Experience with an article titled, ‘Nigeria Suffers in Silence’.

When Abacha took power, he inherited a Nigeria on its knees. His government oversaw an economy spiralling as a result of international backlash. The backlash included economic sanctions following the annulment of the June 12 1993 election. His government also faced growing domestic dissatisfaction. Especially as the Ogoni crisis became even more prominent.

Crude oil is an international commodity so what was happening in Nigeria wasn’t entirely local. But what was happening in the global oil markets? Funbi can you give us a rundown? 

Yes I can, at the time global crude oil prices had fallen considerably because of the Gulf War. The Gulf War was waged by a coalition of over 30 countries led by the United States against Iraq in response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. The war ran from August 1990 to February 1991. Compared to an average of $20 per barrel as of 1989. In 1993, crude oil sold for an average of $17 per barrel. So for the Abacha regime it was important that the prices didn’t fall further.

Thanks, Funbi! Agitations in the South-South region had been happening throughout the year. In January of 1993, for instance, the Ogoni held a peaceful protest against Shell. This was one of the largest protests led by a minority group in the country and not surprisingly it garnered both national and international interest. This was also significant because the United Nations had designated 1993 as the International Year of the World’s Indigenous People.

By June 1993, Shell had stopped all operations in the Ogoni region, and this raised concerns for the Abacha regime as oil was the major source of government revenue and Shell one of the largest companies in the oil industry.

The Niger Delta is oil-rich, inexhaustible wealth that the military under Abacha did not want to lose. They were thinking that revenues would decline if they left them alone, so they needed to kill the opposition forces, and that economic interest was overriding.

To end the unrest, Abacha created the RSIS state security force in early 1994. RSIS was meant to serve as a buffer between oil companies and the local community; to maintain law and order under the leadership of Major Paul Okuntimo, who served as Commander of the RSIS unit and Lieutenant Colonel Dauda Musa Komo, who served as the Rivers State Administrator. By 1994, RSIS became terrorists for the Ogonis and other minority groups. RSIS officers often colluded with both the government and the oil companies like Shell to hold the line, intimidate and terrorize the Ogonis. According to Ogoni TV and a 1995 article in the Independent, titled, ‘Nigerian Dissident Faces Death Penalty’, Okuntimo was renowned for boasting about the 213 ways the Ogonis could be killed.

Many in the oil-rich Ogoni communities spoke out against the environmental and economic damages oil extraction was causing. By 1993, these voices had become united by a nonviolent organization Saro-Wiwa led called the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP). And feeling isolated from the wider Nigerian political forum, many Ogonis had boycotted the June 12 1993 elections voicing their belief that Nigeria did not fairly represent them or their interests. Organized, the Ogonis would not easily back down. Hungry for oil wealth, the Abacha regime only became more furious.

The situation was tense. But against this backdrop, the Ogonis were also dealing with local conflicts such as with the Andoni people in which the military had intervened. According to Saro-Wiwa’s brother Dr. Owens Wiwa who the journalist J Timothy Hunt quotes in his book, The Politics of Bones, some Ogoni fishermen had gone missing which led to an inter-ethnic conflict between the Ogoni and Andoni in 1993. By September 1993 an Ogoni/Andoni Peace Accord had been signed. Yet, tension continued.

For Saro-Wiwa, restitution and justice for the Ogoni were the priorities. He had made plans to visit his family in London after his son Tedum died following a heart-related illness. But according to his son, Ken Wiwa, Saro-Wiwa remained hyper-focused on the Ogoni Struggle. 

In Ken Junior’s memoir, Ken Junior writes: ‘When he came to London, we immediately locked horns when I pointedly refused to talk about the struggle. I reminded him that the bills for Tedum’s funeral still hadn’t been paid, and that his son’s grave did not have a headstone.’Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked. I shook my head in disbelief. He stayed long enough to honor our commitment to plant a tree at the spot where Tedum had died.’

Saro-Wiwa returned to Nigeria sometime between late November 1993 and early January of 1994. In Nigeria, he had a meeting with Abacha to discuss the military’s involvement in the Ogoni/Andoni conflict, which Abacha denied. According to Ken Junior, this sparked a discussion between Saro-Wiwa and Abacha about the state of the Ogoni struggle. During that discussion, Abacha asked Saro-Wiwa to become Nigeria’s minister of oil. A strategy Abacha said he hoped would ease tensions.

How did Saro-Wiwa respond to the offer? Well, it was an unequivocal no. According to Ken Junior’s memoir, his exact words were ‘the Ogoni struggle was about justice for the community, not political appointments for individuals.’

After the meeting with Abacha, Saro Wiwa felt optimistic, like he had tasted some victory. According to Ken Junior’s memoir,

‘Ken Saro-Wiwa, the eternal optimist, came away from the meeting in a buoyant mood. Friends warned him about Abacha, but he genuinely felt, or maybe he just hoped, that he had won over the taciturn little general; he declared that Abacha was sympathetic to the Ogoni cause. But the two men might as well have been speaking different languages: what my father didn’t know was that Abacha was already planning his coup. While my father left with a positive impression of Abacha, the general quietly marked his cards.’

Unknown to Saro-Wiwa, his rejection of Abacha’s offer made him public enemy number one. And as Abacha committed in his take over speech, he was ready to deal swiftly and brutally with any form of indiscipline.

There is nothing very strange in this appointment, because it is the politics of co-option. You can’t become a Minister of Oil and still be active. That’s not going to happen if you have to take one. You can’t be an environmental activist, a minister and be attacking Shell. That’s not going to work. You can’t say we put a whole ministry in your charge, the management of the Niger Delta, the supervision of Shell, and become a critic.

At the start of this episode I mentioned that Abacha and Saro-Wiwa were once neighbours, that their sons were even friends. In the American-Canadian journalist J Timothy Hunt’s book, The Politics of Bones, Dr Owens Wiwa explains a bit more about Abacha and Saro-Wiwa’s relationship. He also discusses how the foundation of this relationship was Saro-Wiwa’s career in government. We discuss this in the next episode but for now, in The Politics of Bones, Dr. Owens Wiwa says ‘Ken maintained good relationships with officers in the Nigerian Army. As administrator of Bonny Island, he had needed military cooperation to aid Ogoni refugees and to see that relief such as food and clothing could get to Ogoniland. Ken kept up these important relationships by throwing regular parties at number 11 Nzimiro Street. One evening’s guest list included the commander of the Nigerian Army Engineering Corps, Olusegun Obasanjo; the army chief of staff under Murtala Mohammed, General T.Y. Danjuma; and Ken’s next-door neighbour, a short, quiet soldier named Sani Abacha.’

Until that meeting, Saro-Wiwa might have been able to leverage his personal history with Abacha. But when he declined the offer, implying that he would continue to support the Ogoni resistance, Saro-Wiwa seemed to shut the door on that relationship.  

And it escalated because oil was the number one revenue earner for Nigeria. And the way Abacha saw it Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni people wanted to damage the basis of the country’s revenue, the reliance on oil. So Saro-Wiwa and MOSOP, whatever they were doing, became interpreted by the federal government as an insurgency movement as undermining the interest of the government, as undermining the interest of Shell.

On one hand, Saro-Wiwa might have been optimistic for an Ogoni victory after his meeting with Abacha but his rejection of Abacha’s offer also came from his deep mistrust for the government.

To deny a people the right to self-determination for well over a hundred years is to subject them to slavery. To take away the resources of a people, and not give them anything in return, is to subject them to slavery. To take away the land of a people who depend on land for their survival, and refuse to pay them compensation, is to subject them to genocide.

On the other hand, when it came to the Niger Delta, Abacha had only one priority: to secure his regime’s hold over Nigeria’s oil wealth. He wanted to expunge what his regime called the ‘MOSOP Virus’ from the Niger Delta so that oil-related activities in the region would not be further disrupted.

In May 1994, Abacha found an opportunity to act: he launched one of the most brutal, targeted repression campaigns in Nigeria’s history. This crackdown would culminate on November 10 1995, with the military execution of Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists. The execution became one of the largest crises of the Abacha regime both domestically and internationally. It led to Time Magazine labelling Abacha the ‘Thug of the Year’ in 1995. More seriously, it led to Nigeria’s suspension from the Commonwealth.

But wait: our journey into the Niger Delta and Ken Saro-Wiwa’s story has only just begun. Over the course of the season, we will look into Ken Saro-Wiwa’s life, the Ogoni Crisis and the birth of MOSOP; the trials and executions of the nine Ogoni activists, the aftermath of these murders, and what meaning this dark historical moment has today, nearly 30 years on. 

Earlier, I mentioned that Ken Junior described Saro-Wiwa as an eternal optimist. But I also shared a glimpse of the types of tensions that sometimes showed up between Saro-Wiwa’s personal life and his activism. We talked about his ability to stand up to Abacha but even more impressive was his ability to mobilize the masses. What was it about Saro-Wiwa that made him such a pivotal force among the Ogonis? Could it have been the same qualities that made Abacha consider him a threat? Next week on The Republic, we will look deeper into Ken Saro-Wiwa’s life and try to piece these puzzles together.

Thanks to Aderemi Ojo, Ibrahim Odugbemi and Peace Onafuye for the archival audio you heard on this episode and our overall research. 

You’ll find a full list of the books, articles, and documentaries that we relied on in researching this episode at our website, republic.com.ng/podcasts.

The Republic Podcast is produced by The Republic, a digital media startup based in Lagos, Nigeria; with technical sound engineering by the Voix Collective. The artwork for the show is by Sarah Kanu with graphic design by Dami Mojid and Wale Lawal. Our script writers are Funbi Akinsanya, Tony Malik and myself, Wale Lawal⎈