S2 EP3: The Ogoni Crisis

These lines from the Urhobo poet, Tanure Ojaide’s ‘Delta Blues’, encapsulate the pains and struggles shared among all indigenes of the Niger Delta, whose paradise was turned into a battleground following the discovery of crude oil in 1956. 

The Ogonis are a prominent ethnic group in the Niger Delta. And in the 1950s, the oil wealth found in Ogoni promised a future of prosperity. It meant that the small agriculture and fishery community could be potentially transformed into an industrial hub. But this dream soon became a nightmare as the government and the oil companies had other plans. The Ogonis never saw the promised prosperity. 

In his book, The Politics of Bones, journalist J Timothy Hunt quoted Ken Saro-Wiwa saying ‘We find it most intolerable that we who sit on oil should be one of the poorest, if not the poorest, people in the country.’

The Ogonis began to live in a dystopian reality with oil spillages and acute damages to properties, land, rivers and swamps that had once been used for farming and fishing. Many Ogonis lost their livelihoods and became dissatisfied with the continued degradation of their environment and their lives. 

In January 1993, things came to a head when a peaceful protest by the Ogonis led by Saro-Wiwa’s Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) against Shell was met with violence from the Nigerian government. But what exactly happened? How did the Ogonis’ peaceful protest turn into a nightmare that many in Ogoniland today are still shuddering from? How did the Ogonis’ hopes become weaponized against them?

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. In this episode, we’ll explore the history of Ogoniland, trace the rise of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) and unpack the roots of what we now know today as the Ogoni Crisis. 

Where exactly is the Niger Delta? To answer this question, I went back to 1956, to Professor Kenneth Dike’s Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta from 1830 to 1885. In the book, which is one of the most important books written on African history, Professor Dike provides an essential historical guide to the Niger Delta. I asked Funbi Akinsanya who wrote this episode with me to read his description of the Niger Delta.

Professor Dike explained that the Niger Delta may be described as, and I’m now quoting him:

The region is bounded by the Benin river on the west and the Cross river in the east, including the coastal area where the Cameroon mountains dip into the sea. It covers an area of some 270 miles along the Atlantic coast and is 120 miles in depth. The two mouths of the Niger are the Forcados and the Nun, but the rivers Benin, Brass, Bonny, Kwa-Ibo, the Cross, and other separate streams are linked to these by a labyrinth of creeks and lagoons. ‘ I believe ’, wrote Mary Kingsley, ‘ the great swamp region of the Bight of Biafra [Niger Delta] is the greatest in the world, and that in its immensity and gloom, it has a grandeur equal to that of the Himalayas.’

Back to you Wale. 

Thanks, Funbi. Something Professor Dike also noted that I found interesting was that for a long time the Niger Delta had been immensely underrated. He wrote that and I’m quoting him: 

‘There remains, however, the intriguing paradox that this area, notorious among nineteenth-century travellers for its unhealthiness, with a soil too poor ‘to produce a ton of oil’ as Macgregor Laird put it in 1832, and practically uninhabited by the tribes of the Nigerian interior before the Portuguese adventure to the Guinea coasts began, had become by 1830 the greatest single trading area in West Africa.’

One of the largest ports was located in the Niger Delta in a city state known as Bonny (today we call it Bonny Island). According to missionaries like Hugh Goldie in 1890, the population demographic of Bonny was mostly enslaved people. Bonny and the Niger Delta as whole was the most valuable slave market in all of West Africa. In 1822,  Captain John Adams wrote: This place is a wholesale market for slaves, as not fewer than 20,000 are annually sold here; 16,000 of whom are members of one nation, called Igbos (he spelled it Heebos), so that’s the single nation…’. According to Professor Dike, the slave trade of the Niger Delta was so profitable that it equalled the cumulative trade of the entire West Africa.

It’s not exactly clear when the name ‘Niger Delta’ became a part of the Nigerian lexicon in the way it is today; but we know the region has lived many lives. From 1883 to 1894, for instance, following the abolishment of slave trading and its emergent success in palm oil trade, the region was called the British Oil Protectorate. It then became the Niger Coast Protectorate till 1900. After a merger between the Royal Niger Company and other chartered British Territories the region was then integrated into the Southern Protectorate which as we all know was later amalgamated with the Northern Region to form Nigeria in 1914.

Going back to Professor Dike’s introduction, we know that the Niger Delta was overlooked. Today, however, the Niger Delta is unavoidable in both local and international discussions of Nigeria. After all, it is known for many things, and especially the entangled mesh of governments, private companies, militants, activists, local communities and NGOs that revolve around one precious resource: crude oil. Geographically, the Niger Delta is a region in the southernmost part of Nigeria, an area surrounded by various mangrove swamps, and it sits on the Gulf of Guinea. 

When Nigerians say Niger Delta they are typically referring to a collection of nine states that includes Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Abia, Imo, Edo, Ondo and Rivers whose capital city is Port Harcourt.

Ogoniland, where Saro-Wiwa was from, is located to the east of Port Harcourt, and sits near the coast of the Gulf of Guinea. It is rich with arable farmlands and mangrove swamps known for its oysters and various shellfish.

Ogoniland comprises six kingdoms: Gokana, Babbe, Ken-Khana, Tai, Eleme and Nyo-Khana. Ogonis speak a range of languages belonging to the Benue-Congo sub-family of Niger-Congo languages. But, historically, the Ogonis did not necessarily share a united sense of identity. For example, in The Politics of Bones, J Timothy Hunt wrote that many members of the Khana, Gokana and Eleme groups did not like the term ‘Ogoni’ as the name had its origins in the Ibani word ‘Igoni’ which meant strangers. Funbi, who wrote this episode with me, has more on this.

So here it’s useful to quote Professor EGHOSA E. OSAGHAE. He wrote the 1995 paper, ‘The Ogoni Uprising: Oil Politics, Minority Agitation and the Future of the Nigerian State’. In the paper, he said: ‘The Ogonis do not have a myth of common origin as do most other ethnic groups in Nigeria and they constitute an ethnic group only on the basis of sharing “common language, custom, tradition, farming methods and similar attitudes”. The sub-groups, however, do have myths of common origin and consequently tend to engender stronger loyalties than the Ogoni “nation”.’  

The Niger Delta has a long history and like many African societies, its history is a history of many things including extraction. During my research for this podcast, I asked Professor Toyin Falola and Professor Ben Naanen, two historians, about the history of the Niger Delta. 

Professor Toyin Falola teaches history at the University of Texas Austin. Now, historians are not particularly fond of counterfactuals but when it came to the Niger Delta Professor Falola couldn’t resist: 

one of the richest regions in world history. Say, if the Niger Delta had been a country by itself, all the citizens wouldn’t have to work. You will just be depositing salary into their bank account without doing anything.

In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the Niger Delta was a centre point for the trans-Atlantic slave trade and several historians have argued that such trade institutionalised a pattern of rent seeking. 

That’s essentially the practice of individuals manipulating public policy or economic conditions as a strategy to increase their individual wealth at the expense of their communities’ wealth and development. The Niger Delta was an epicenter of the slave trade. Through the late 16th till late 19th century, Bonny was the economic and political stronghold of the region and so a large number of enslaved people were shipped from Bonny.

In that region of the Niger Delta, upward into part of Biafra, 2.2 million people were enslaved forcibly from that region during the Atlantic slave trade. It was one of the most profitable places for slavery.

When the British Parliament, passed the Slave Trade Act in 1807 which effectively banned the slave trade, many traditional rulers in the Niger Delta pushed back. They argued that abolishing slave trade was at odds with their spiritual beliefs. Captain Hugh Crow recorded a statement by the King of Bonny in his memoirs, where the king said ‘We think that this trade must go on. That also is the verdict of our Oracle and the priests. They say that your country, however great, can never stop a trade ordained by God himself’. 

However, as cash crops like palm oil started generating more demand, the leaders of these city states like Bonny, began to see the advantages of switching to legitimate commerce. Which as you can imagine was also the easier and less horrifying trade. 

While the local community transitioned towards legitimate commerce, the British became interested in exploring further into the Niger Delta. Professor Dike explains how science and intrigue served as the initial motivator for British colonization. There was an incident in 1824, when British Naval Officer, Captain W. F. W. Owen and his squadron arrived in Bonny and began to inspect the Bonny Coastline without permission from King Pepple of Bonny. This led King Pepple to declare an immediate end of trade with the British. In the aftermath of this conflict, King Pepple was recorded to have said,

‘If brother George (he said, referring to King George IV) commands his battleships to attack the slave ships of foreign nations, that is no concern of mine. But he has no right whatsoever to send his men-of-war at will into my dominions. It was the plain duty of the English commander to have waited upon me and explained the import of his mission. I declare emphatically that I can never compromise my sovereign powers. On this issue I am adamant.’

In his memoirs, Captain Owen could not understand why the British traders paid deference and respect to the King of Bonny. This incident foreshadows the tensions that arose as British colonialism came into force in the latter half of the 19th century.

By the late 19th century, slave trade abolition was in full effect and Niger Delta communities transitioned to legitimate commerce, trading commodities like palm oil which was instrumental for British Industrialisation as it was used as a lubricant for engine parts among other uses. Based on data from Linking Partners for Niger Delta Development, the Niger Delta provided 90 per cent of all palm oil purchased by the British. The value of this trade was about 2,000,000 British pounds  a year.

It was one of the most profitable places in world history selling palm oil. When we move into oil production, it’s one of the most profitable places in the world.

They were successful at palm oil. In fact King Jaja of Opobo who Professor Dike described as ‘the greatest African living in the east of modern Nigeria’, had monopolized the palm oil trade and had become incredibly influential within the market. According to Joseph Davey’s paper on King Jaja, in 1871, King Jaja signed a treaty with the British to legitimise Opobo as a trading state. By the 1880s, King Jaja’s palm oil venture shipped palm oil directly to England without British middlemen. This development made British traders uneasy and they grew frustrated with their lack of direct access to the interior resources. So, by 1885, during the Berlin Conference where European powers divided Africa among themselves for colonization, Bonny and Opobo were placed under British colonial rule. The British had also pressured King Jaja and his Chiefs to sign the Treaty of Protection, which gave the British authority to remove rulers who impeded ‘free trade’ which meant removal of anyone who impeded on the growth of the British empire. As a result of this treaty, King Jaja was then exiled from Opobo in 1887 following a dispute with British palm oil traders as he opposed the inclusion of a clause that ensured freedom of movement for British traders granting them access to the interior resources they were desperately after.

Thus, as the palm oil trade flourished, the Niger Deltans could not fully reap the benefits. Eventually, the region fell under British colonial rule, which diverted the wealth towards the British Empire through the Royal Niger Company in 1900. Thus continued the Niger Delta’s legacy of extraction, from enslaved people to palm oil.

By 1914, the Niger Delta now embedded into Southern Protectorate became part of Nigeria following amalgamation. Professor Ben Naanen, who was MOSOP secretary and worked alongside Ken Saro Wiwa, teaches economic history at the University of Port Harcourt. When I met him, I was interested in Ogoniland and more broadly the Niger-Delta’s economic transition over the years and he explained that:

The main impetus for that amalgamation was economic. As I have said, the custom revenue from southern ports  ensured that the colonial administration in the south housed some surplus as against the perpetual deficit in the north. They didn’t have that, although you have taxes under the caliphate and so on. The Caliphate was, well, administered in terms of collecting their own taxes and so on. But we are talking about building a modern economy. And so it was a custom duty from the South that sustained the administration.

Let’s take a closer look at the Ogonis and their history. Historically, the Ogonis thrived as fishermen and farmers and Ogoniland was known as the food basket of the Niger Delta. Their arable farmlands grew household staples such as yams and cassava alongside the bounty of seafood and fish they caught. Their main sources of income included agricultural products especially, processed products such as garri and palm oil. They also traded pottery and palm wine.

And in most local economies, fishing and farming are the primary occupations. So that was the case with Ogoni. A considerable part of Ogoni is littoral, is Riverine part of Ogoni, like the Gokana area and so on. The large part of it engage in agricultural activities and then fishing in those areas. But around that same period too, a lot before then, for a very long time in history, the people in the littoral part of Ogoni had always been adventurous, trading in the Cameroons, Gabon and so on.

In the early 20th Century, the Ogonis were a part of the Southern Protectorate. Administratively, by 1914, they were absorbed into the Opobo division which was under the Calabar Province, which was established after the British took control of Opobo. However, by the 1940s, with the British empire’s influence waning and Nigerians beginning to agitate for more local control, Ogoni elites saw the value of a united Ogoni that could secure them political advantages. And so, in 1945, they established the Ogoni Central Union. One goal the Ogoni Central Union had was to remove Ogoni from under the Opobo division by establishing an Ogoni division. In 1946, the union successfully established the Ogoni division and it was headquartered in Bori.  

According to ‘The Ogoni of Nigeria’, a paper Dr. Abidemi Oyinlade, the British found it easier to sign treaties with the Hausa-Fulani in the North, the Yorubas in the West and the Igbos in the East than with ethnic groups in the Niger Delta. As a result, in 1947, under the Richards Constitution, the British split Nigeria across three major regions North, East and West effectively. Additionally, through the system of indirect rule, they positioned these ethnic groups as leaders of each region ignoring the other 250 ethnic groups present in Nigeria. Indirect rule meant the British could administer by appointing leaders from these ethnic groups without doing any of the actual leg work. Basically, remote work. 

Of course, not everyone was happy with this setup. By the 1950s, Ogoni’s first University Graduate, Paul Birabi, had formed the Ogoni State Representative Assembly. The goal was to establish a Rivers State apart from the Eastern Region. However, that pursuit failed; presumably it got overshadowed by Nigeria’s general push for independence from Britain. In 1960, we officially became independent inheriting the very fragile regional setup the British had created. By 1967, the Ogonis found themselves as part of the newly formed Rivers State still within the Eastern region. 

This formation did not allow the Ogonis to establish their sense of state autonomy. Instead, like many other ethnic groups in the Eastern Region, they remained in the shadows of the Igbos who remained as the dominant group. When I spoke with Dr. Nabie Nubari Francis from the Centre for Environment, Human Rights and Development (CEHRD), he made an interesting point about how Britain’s administering of Nigeria was colonization and how Nigeria’s continued use of the British regional setup was neo-colonization.

Neo-colonialism is actually one of the problems where some Nigerians now colonize other Nigerians. Nigerians felt we were oppressed by the British and we felt okay, we need to come out and be ourselves. And it came to a point where other tribes now again being colonized, being undermined, being seen as more like a sub-Nigerian and not a thorough Nigerian. And it is those sets of individuals, sets of tribes, those sets of groups that are now suffering a new colonialism, that are now seen as minority groups. The Igbos, the Hausas and the Yorubas are not classified as minorities, because even at universities, they are learning their languages but we are all Nigerians.

During the civil war era, the Ogonis did not necessarily share a sense of common identity with the Igbos who sought independence of the Eastern Region from Nigeria. In fact, many Ogonis were opposed to the Biafran movement. But because they were considered as being within the Eastern Region the Biafran separationists included Ogoniland in the seceded Biafra. For perspective, the population of Igbos at the time was 9.3 million based on the 1963 census while the Ogonis were roughly 300,000 people. When we also consider the closer proximity to power that the Igbos had by being the dominant group in the East, the Ogonis could not on their own withstand the force of the Biafran regime. It is one of the complications of the civil war that Nigerians tend to overlook. It is true that our collective knowledge of the war is limited but our knowledge of the war beyond the three dominant ethnic groups is even more dangerous. Saro-Wiwa, like many Ogonis, was not fond of the inclusion of the Ogoni within Biafra. Professor Ben Naanen provided some clarity as to why.

He wasn’t comfortable with that, and he opposed it. Even as a student, he did. Saro-Wiwa was one of the members of the Rivers State Study Group based in Lagos that were agitating for the creation of Rivers State. He had graduated. He was at the University of Lagos at the time as a young academic, so he was part of that River State movement. So when Biafra was declared, he was totally against it, because he felt that the oppression, in quote, of the minorities would intensify under the Biafra regime.

Ken Saro-Wiwa’s fears were not unfounded as Biafran militants terrorised the Ogonis during the war. Here’s Funbi, with a quote from The Politics of Bones: 

Igbo militiamen began browbeating the inhabitants of the Niger Delta to contribute to their care and feeding. As reward for their coerced support, the Ogonis were subjected to raids on their personal property, the looting of their money, and the rape of wives and daughters. Husbands and fathers who protested were beaten, often fatally. Since it was illegal for any non-Igbo to have a gun, the Ogonis were defenceless.

So did the war then bring Ogonis together? It’s not that simple. We might think crisis fuels solidarity but history repeatedly shows us that when societies encounter crises, we prioritise the individual over the communal, we put individual survival ahead of collective solidarity. For one, survival is instinctive, it needs immediate thinking while solidarity needs planning, a shared philosophy. And so not surprisingly, the brutality the Ogonis experienced during the civil war did not necessarily foster a pan-Ogoni mindset among them. It just made people desperate to survive by any means.

What the war did though was highlight a vacuum; the fact that the Ogonis had no means of protecting each other. Saro-Wiwa, who at this time was supporting Nigeria’s war effort and working as an administrator at Bonny Island, noticed the Ogoni dilemma. They were trapped: in both contexts, Nigerian and Biafran, Ogonis were not considered equal citizens. Instead, external forces were deciding the future of Ogoni without any Ogoni input. It occurred to Saro-Wiwa that the Ogonis needed a pan-Ogoni agenda, and in 1969, Saro-Wiwa published The Ogoni Nation: Today and Tomorrow, a  historical and cultural booklet calling for the unification of all Ogonis.

In the Politics of Bones, Hunt wrote, and I’ll quote this:‘In 1969, trudging with his stack of booklets through more than one hundred rural Ogoni villages, Ken discovered that the common Ogoni man was ready to follow a dedicated leadership.’

The Ogonis were seeing significant oil spills occur in Bori and K-pere, which impacted farmlands and local fishing waters, disrupting the livelihoods of the Ogonis that lived there. By the 1970s, their shared experiences of such environmental degradation further unified them. Nearly 25 years later in 1990, this unification of all Ogoni people helped set the foundation for MOSOP to be born. We talk a lot more about this in the next episode. Until then just know that by the 90s, the Yorubas, Igbos and Hausas remained the most populous ethnic groups in Nigeria with 20,000,000, 18,000,000 and 33 million people respectively. Nigeria had not conducted a census since the 1960s, so the numbers are an approximation using the World Bank projections. In comparison, the Ogonis had grown to a population of around 500,000 people. 

In 1958, Shell D’arcy discovered the oil field in Bomu within Ogoniland. By 1965, the first oil refinery was established in Alesa Eleme in Ogoni. Shell naturally had a first-mover advantage…

Shell for years, operating Royal Dutch Shell in Nigeria, since the 1930s, one of the very first to lift oil in the 50s, you have to regard it as a gladiator.

By the 1970s, an oil boom was in full swing. In episode 1 we discussed Nigeria’s experience of the oil boom, how Nigeria made so much money and had so few debt obligations that we could fund a global festival like FESTAC 77. At this time, Shell D’arcy had become Shell-BP Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria Limited. 

By July 1971, Nigeria joined the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). According to a 1982 Economic and Financial Review from central bank executive Professor Green O Nwankwo, Nigeria joined OPEC to have better gains and control of its petroleum industry. But compared to other OPEC countries, the Nigerian government received less tax revenue from companies. A quote from the review goes:

‘In a nutshell, Nigeria joined OPEC because of the need to correct its faulty administration of petroleum taxation such that the government receipts per barrel and posted prices could compare more favourable with those of the OPEC members as well as the advisability of aligning her aspirations with those of other oil exporting countries at similar stages of development. Furthermore, since she had gained some benefits from the efforts of OPEC even when she was not a member, it became necessary to remove the guilty complex of being a ‘free rider’ by joining and fully identifying herself with the organisation in the just struggle for wresting control of the oil industry from the foreign companies.’

In December, 1979, Shell became Shell Petroleum Development Corporation or SPDC. The corporation was pretty much a joint venture between the Nigerian government through the Nigerian National Petroleum Company (NNPC), and Shell. NNPC owned 80 per cent of the company, Shell owned 20 per cent. A legacy of the indigenization decree we discussed in episode one. 

In essence, Shell no longer held majority control of the company, but they managed the operations of SPDC. By the 1990s, SPDC had become a new joint venture with NNPC holding a 55 per cent stake, Shell – 30 percent, Elf – 10 percent and Agip – 5 percent, with Shell still running the day to day operations of the company. 

When Shell came, when the oil companies, let me say, generally, it was a kind of two party arrangement between the government and the oil companies. The indigenous community were not taken into account even in the distribution of the oil revenue. Everything was divided between the oil companies and the central government, and of course, tied to that was the issue of revenue allocation.

But with the promise of economic wealth and sustenance, greed, political power and agenda quickly funnelled into a curse.

According to Prof Naanen, the government in the 1970s tried to be fairer allocating the crude oil revenue but corruption and greed prevailed.

Rivers State was one of the richest in the 70s with the first wave of oil. But still, you discover that at that level, not much was going into the oil producing communities. Yes, the government at the time, they tried. We don’t have convincing evidence of the level of misappropriation or the level of mismanagement that is prevalent in Nigeria today as of that time. So they still tried to do something centrally to the state, but the local communities were still not in the picture. So that is part of the origin of that problem. And we did not just blame that distribution. We also have to blame leadership at the local community level.

The environmental degradation of Ogoni was a growing concern. In fact, University of Denver academic Steven Cayford wrote that: ‘On one notable occasion in 1970, rather than clean up crude oil that had spilled onto farmland near Ebubu, Shell burned the oil, leaving a crust more than fifteen feet thick.’

By April of 1970, some Ogoni Chiefs submitted a petition titled, ‘Humble Petition of Complaint on Shell-BP Operations in Ogoni Division’ to the military state government. We talked about this in earlier episodes. In the petition, they asked for an investigation of Shell’s activities in the region.They expressed concern about the loss of their farmlands and mangrove swamps which had robbed the community’s local farmers and fishermen of their livelihoods. 

We also talked about how historians believe that Saro-Wiwa masterminded the petition and used the Chiefs as a front. But the response Shell-BP gave was, and I’m going to quote this from Hunt’s The Politics of Bones: 

‘As is the case with the other oil Companies operating in Nigeria, our obligations and responsibilities are clearly delineated in the agreements made with the Federal government and by the Laws and Regulations relating to the oil industry in Nigeria. These have always been meticulously observed by this Company. We have, however, been extremely careful to ensure that our operations cause minimal disturbance to the people in the areas in which we operate… There can be no doubt, however, that the incidental benefits accruing to the Ogoni Division from Shell-BP’s presence there greatly outweighs any disadvantages.’

Over the next 20 years, Shell, Chevron and other oil companies continued their exploration and extraction of crude oil in an unethical and negligent manner. It got so bad that in 1993, the New York Times ran an article by Kenneth B. Noble, titled, ‘Kidere Journal; Atop a Sea of Oil, Nigerians Are Mired in Misery’, which highlighted the impact of Shell’s operations in Ogoni since the 1970s.

There have been environmental issues. You know, environmental consciousness, not the same way that we have it today. Yes, I could say Shell was particularly careless about that. They didn’t mind so much, maybe because they didn’t have a better, a good idea of the future.

In contrast, Shell argued that their oil activities had created economic gains for the Nigerian economy and the government. And Shell wasn’t exactly wrong. At this point, Nigeria was making between $5 to 10,000,000,000 U.S. dollars through oil each year. This was convenient for Shell as the oil gains made the government hesitant to implement stronger regulations for greater environmental care or compensation for the damages. Oil and Ogoni had become a money game. Chimeka Garricks, who wrote the Niger Delta novel, Tomorrow Died Yesterday, had an interesting way of thinking about oil money: 

Oil money is like trying to get money from a genie. Genie with a lamp. You know, you’re waiting for this big windfall and all that, but you’re forgetting to do… it makes you mad and all that, but you forget to do what you’re meant to do the important things.

By the 1990s, the Nigerian economy remained dependent on oil exports and oil exports accounted for over 70 per cent of the government’s revenue. Plus, companies like Shell, Chevron, and Exxon Mobil held the largest stake of the oil extraction capacity. This led to an unequal distribution of wealth especially for those within the local communities, where the treasured black gold was being extracted. In fact, Shell began to use its money as means to drive the company’s problems away and to draw some local community members. Helon Habila, who wrote the petrofiction novel, Oil on Water, explained that:

And then, of course, if you find these companies giving them pittance, little money here, little money there, sometimes pitting one community against the other, so that they are kind of degrading them morally because they have to survive. So it’s about survival at the end of the day, you know.

Rivers state has always been blessed or cursed with governors who take oil money and use it for wild political ambitions.

So the leadership, anytime there was a problem, they would just throw money at it. That was in the 90s. That was especially with the Ogoni uprising, they felt that maybe if you give them money, you do this thing you could so every little thing Shell will throw money at them. That was one of the ways they felt they could be pacified. So the leadership became completely monetized, as it were, completely monetized, and that also accounted for conflict in the communities, because they now got into that problem of not being very accountable.

‘The World Bank estimates that as much as 76 per cent of all natural gas from petroleum production in Nigeria is flared (compared to 0.6 per cent in the United States, 4.3 per cent in the United Kingdom, and 21 per cent in Libya)

What you just heard is an excerpt from Hunt’s The Politics of Bones. To understand why there was so much discontent in Ogoniland, Here’s Funbi with another excerpt, this time from Saro-Wiwa’s son, Ken Junior’s memoir, In the Shadow of a Saint.

The book reads: after thirty years of exploration, after an estimated 900 million barrels worth an estimated 100,000,000,000 U.S. dollars had been extracted from the land, the region had very little to show for it. There was little electricity or pipe-borne water in the community; schools and hospitals were chronically underfunded, poorly staffed and badly maintained. A community of fishermen and subsistence farmers was threatened by the effects of the oil industry.

Fegalo Nsuke, the leader of MOSOP from 2019 to 2023, put this in even better context:

What people are asking for is fairness, that we have the capacity to generate a huge amount of money for our country, but we are also asking that a fair proportion of the resources that are extracted from Ogoni be committed to Ogoni development. That is all the Ogoni struggle is about. So much has been taken, yet that this much that has been taken is not reflecting on the lives of the people.

By the 90s, there were significant advancements in technology which could effectively track the damages caused by oil extraction within Ogoni land.

Here’s Funbi with an extract from Cayford’s paper on the Ogoni crisis:

‘A poorly maintained network of above-ground pipes … has led to routine spills of crude oil, much of it on farmland… This is in stark contrast to Shell’s operations in the United States and Europe; the Nigerian operations were responsible for 40 percent of Shell’s spills worldwide… Shell claimed that in 1992 the majority of spills in Ogoniland were the result of sabotage by farmers seeking compensation money; however, Shehu Othman, an independent oil analyst at Oxford University, thinks this is unlikely since compensations are small and cover only the cost of the damage to crops themselves, not the permanent damage to the land…’

Essentially, there was now even quantitative data to support the alarms Niger Deltans had been raising over the environmental destruction, economic exploitation, and social injustices caused by oil companies. For years, Ogonis like Saro-Wiwa had authored several papers and books discussing and raising awareness about the continued degradation of Ogoniland and the lack of compensation for the Ogonis.  In 1990, Ken Saro-Wiwa channelled this angst into the establishment of  MOSOP.

Saro-Wiwa believed that writers had a responsibility to act beyond the page. In his 1995 prison diary, A Month and a Day, he explained his philosophy. He wrote that writers must:  

‘…establish direct contact with the people and resort to the strength of African literature-oratory in the tongue. For the word is power and more powerful is it when expressed in common currency. That is why a writer who takes part in mass organizations will deliver his message more effectively than one who only writes waiting for time to work its literary wonders.’ 

Saro-Wiwa’s strategy with MOSOP was influenced by movements led by America’s Martin Luther King Junior and India’s Mahatma Gandhi.As such, Saro-Wiwa adopted a peaceful approach to his organised protests and demonstrations. In addition, he embedded the fight for Minority Rights into the movement’s agenda through their involvement with transnational advocacy groups like the Ethnic Minority Rights Organization of Africa, and the Unrepresented Peoples Organization . 

He also aligned the movement with the growing global Green Movement. This ensured the Ogoni movement was not just limited to Nigeria’s borders but connected with a broader issue of international magnitude and concern. 

To quote Austin Tam-George’s 2010 paper on Ken Saro-Wiwa, ‘the Ogoni campaign, the story of the struggle of a Nigerian minority community demanding environmental justice became a regular feature in such Western news media as the New York Times, Newsweek, Time magazine, Cable News Network (CNN), the British Channel 4 and many others.’

Very quickly,Saro-Wiwa took up the role of spokesman for the Ogoni. In some ways, he emerged as a Messianic leader supported by a community eager for accountability and justice. 

Ken led one of the most successful democratic experiments in black Africa by leading a mass exodus of the Ogonis into a non-violent and peaceful protest where their voice was heard globally.

Let’s not forget, he (Ken) didn’t start up as an activist. He was a writer and an administrator, you know. So the pains, and the fact that he could leave everything he had was enough conviction for the people. He was a wealthy guy, and wasn’t a poor person. He had a comfortable life, but he left all these things. So people were like ‘if this man we know could leave all this for us, so why don’t we support him?’

‘Frankly speaking, I think that one of the things that made Ken Saro-Wiwa so outstanding and so successful in this movement is that the Ogonis were proud of him. He made us proud as a people, because we lived in a very terrible condition. A lot of people within the Niger Delta looked down on the Ogoni. They talk down on Ogoni. It was derogatory to think of being an Ogoni because of the kind of environment we lived in. The environment was completely polluted. There was no single factory in all of what you had called Ogoni except the Eleme local government axis. So, life was difficult for the Ogoni people, and Ken Saro-Wiwa, out of that, was able to give pride to the Ogoni.’

Saro-Wiwa energized the Ogoni movement and was unequivocal about calling out the injustices the Ogonis were experiencing. In 1995, he boldly accused the Nigerian government of genocide against the Ogoni people. He highlighted that the government had allowed oil companies to run unethical practices they did not replicate in the Western countries these companies were often headquartered. He insisted that oil companies were racist and that the government was complicit in their racism. 

I accuse the ethnic majority who ran Nigeria of practising genocide against the Ogoni people. I accuse the oil companies which prospect for oil in Ogoni for encouraging genocide against the Ogoni people. I accuse Shell and Chevron of practising racism against the Ogoni people because they do in Ogoni what they do not do in other parts of the world where they prospect for oil. The devastation of the Ogoni countryside, the complete destruction of the Ogoni ecosystem, the dehumanisation of the Ogoni people, the denial to them of education, and other health facilities and other social amenities. All these together have led the Ogoni down the way of extinction. I accuse the Nigerian government. 

In 1990, MOSOP presented the Ogoni Bill of Rights, which was signed by four traditional Chiefs to the Federal Government of Nigeria and UN Working Groups for Indigenous Peoples. The bill stated four core asks:

First it asked for Political Autonomy which guaranteed political control over Ogoni Affairs by the Ogoni people

Second: The right to control and use a fair proportion of Ogoni economic resources for Ogoni development

Third: Adequate representation within Nigeria’s national institutions.

Lastly: The right to protect the Ogoni environment and ecology from further degradation.

So MOSOP was formed in 1990, followed by the drafting of the Ogoni Bill of Rights. In fact, the Ogoni Bill of Rights preceded MOSOP.

The Bill of Rights told us that we were being marginalized. We were oppressed, and we saw this practical oppression, this practical marginalization in our environment. We saw the reality of what the bid of right was talking about in our environment, and we didn’t like it.

When we had a look at the Ogoni Bill of Rights, nothing in their requests seemed particularly unreasonable. Especially for a community that had been overlooked and exploited for much of Nigeria’s post-colonial history. Was it really extreme for them to demand recognition and compensation for the environmental degradation they were experiencing? By the 1990s, Ogoniland had contributed over 900,000,000  barrels of oil for exports since the 1950s through Shell(roughly estimated 100,000,000,000 US dollars) and received zero to very little from the revenue generated.

How can a place that has been the most profitable since the 16th century be one of the most backward? In answering this question, you have to connect it to the role of foreign trade, transactional businesses and the power elite. The Nigerian power elite is not from that region. Let me tell you what many Nigerians don’t know. You know the kings and chiefs in that region, they don’t have oil blocks. They don’t. Redeem has oil block, OANDO – oil block. Emir, Sultan – oil block. When revenues were collected, they didn’t have power in sharing that money.

The indigenous community were not taken into account even in the distribution of the oil revenue. Everything was divided between the oil companies and the central government, and of course, tied to that was the issue of revenue allocation. And so when the revenue came in, when the people were virtually forgotten, where this oil was taken from and virtually forgotten, even in terms of the revenue distribution. And that is part of the problem of Nigerian federalism, that it was revenue from this place that sustained the country and the people did not have a say.

Yet, MOSOP’s demands were rebuffed and left unanswered by then Head of State IBB.

By December 1992, MOSOP had issued a 30-day ultimatum that the Ogoni receive royalties and compensation from the oil companies occupying Ogoni, which included Shell, Chevron and NNPC. MOSOP specifically asked for five things:

‘(l) payment of  6,000,000 US dollars for accumulated rents and royalties for oil exploration since 1958; 

(2) payment of 4,000,000 US dollars  for damages and compensation for environmental pollution, devastation and ecological degradation; 

(3) immediate stoppage of environmental degradation and in particular gas flaring in Yorla, Korokoro and Bomu; 

(4) immediate covering of all exposed high pressure oil pipelines; and

(5) initiation of negotiations with Ogoni people ‘with a view to reaching meaningful and acceptable terms for further and continued exploration and exploitation of oil from Ogoniland and to agree on workable and effective plans for environmental protection of the Ogoni people.’

Oil companies basically ignored these requests. At most, they just tightened their security and continued business as usual. Additionally, to hold back MOSOP, the IBB government issued a ban on mass demonstrations in January of 1993. But the Ogonis were determined. Despite the government ban, on 4 January 1993, the MOSOP movement launched a rally called Ogoni Day. From our research, Nigeria had 500,000 Ogonis at that time and around 300,000 of them came out to march. That’s three in every five Ogonis. That’s a rare, vast turnout even these days. I asked Professor Naanen and MOSOP leader Nsuke what that experience was like.  

We had to choose the day in the MOSOP leadership, especially for me and Saro Wiwa, we both discussed this issue outside the country, to choose the year of indigenous people as launched by the United Nations. 1993 was declared by the United Nations as the year of indigenous people. So the team was to get international attention by launching a massive demonstration to observe the United Nations International Year of the indigenous people. And that thing took place on January 4th 1993 which was a very successful launching all across Ogoni. It was a massive mobilization. I haven’t seen that kind of movement in any part of Nigeria before.

‘ January 4 1993 rally gathered so much momentum because it was an event that marked the International Year of the World’s Indigenous People. And so Ogoni took that opportunity to mark the International Year of the World’s Indigenous People. So to a large extent, I will say a whole lot of those who turned up for that rally did so because of what it signified. We wanted to tell the world that we are a distinct people with a distinct identity, and we were endangered, and so you find everybody turned up for that driving. It was massive.’

Austin Tam-George described this mass movement as a carnival that not only advocated for the rights of the Ogoni people and justice for the continued denigration of their environment but also showcased their culture and significance. They coined an Ogoni hymn, ‘Aaken Aaken Ogoni’, which served as a charge to remind the people of their reason to fight. Just listen: 

The first lines say Arise! Ogoni People Arise! That we shall not allow people of the world to deprive us. Study! Ogoni people study! That we shall not allow people of the world to deprive us. This anthem helps us see how fundamentally intellectual the Ogoni struggle was. Studying and empowerment through education was essential to their fight, no doubt Saro-Wiwa’s influence. Along with its intellectual core and its international reach, Professor Naanen helped me understand that MOSOP was distinctly a grassroots movement. 

I would think that MOSOP was one of the foremost grassroots movements. It was at the grassroots. It wasn’t an urban phenomenon or anything of that nature. So you can now see the fervour, the enthusiasm, the determination that had now been generated about the people.

Back on Ogoni Day in 1993, the government responded by arresting several Ogonis. Fearing retaliation from the community, Shell temporarily suspended its operations in Ogoni. Soon after, IBB hosted MOSOP leaders to discuss a way forward. This meeting yielded no results. 

Basically, women are very powerful in social movements. I can tell you that women played some very key role in urging Shell out. The protests from women were so massive. I mean, women did a lot; a lot in terms of coming out and confronting SPDC.

For almost a decade I’ve studied social movements and one thing is very clear: in every movement, women are often the backbone. One thing I noticed very early on during my research for this podcast, is that women played very significant and very organised roles during the Ogoni movement and yet the history of the Ogoni movement is very men-oriented. But this is changing. Meet Dr Domale Dube Keys, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Alberta, who is one of the minds gendering Ogoni history.

My name is Domale Dube Keys. And I am currently an assistant professor at the University of Alberta in Alberta, Canada. And I was born in Bori, Ogoni, which we see as the capital of Ogoni. I lived there through the early 90s, right as the movement for the survival of Ogoni people emerged. I actually left with my family as a refugee because of the retaliation that the government had against the Ogoni people. And so, this topic is very near and dear to my heart. I personally have never met Ken Saro-Wiwa, to my recollection, anyway, but we were neighbours, and he was very close friends with my parents, particularly my father.

When we met, Dr Keys had been working on a book about how women shaped the Ogoni movement, specifically through the Federation of Ogoni Women’s Associations or FOWA. FOWA was established in 1993 and Dr. Key’s mother was one of FOWA’s leaders. I asked Dr Keys about FOWA and her ongoing research. Here’s some of our conversation: 

The movement really started in Port Harcourt, where Ken Saro Wiwa would have small groups where he was teaching them about what was going on in the oil industry, and the ways in which the oil industry was essentially unfairly treating the Ogoni people. And he would give them the history. He would give them the facts. And the women who were involved in Port Harcourt now brought it, and followed him all the way to the villages and followed him throughout. And so it was from there, these few women who were participating in those small groups, and they felt…and I think that this is important to note, one of them, her name is Mary Beke. She is one of the leaders of the FOWA movement in Gokana. And she talks about receiving a calling, almost like a spiritual calling from her participation and involvement in those small house meetings that were happening in Port Harcourt, which helped her and pushed her to really take on the baton, I guess, of this moment and take it to women who were all over Gokana. Because that was where she was at. And I’m sure the story is the same for a lot of other women in Kana, in Tai, who were part of the smaller groups. And they took on the baton, and they all talked about it as a calling that they will take on for the rest of their lives.

What I found with FOWA is that: number one, they did not see themselves as an afterthought. Honestly, from my conversations with them, they saw themselves as leaders on an equal footing as any of the other organizations. So MOSOP is a combination of several different organizations. There was the youth, the Nuos. There was the religious clergy. They had their branch. They had so many different branches. The Chiefs had their own branch. And then you had the women, the Federation of Ogoni Women’s Association. And what I found was that, as I mentioned, women were involved in the organization from the very beginning, even from those small house meetings, before the movement was taken to the people in 1993. And women insisted on being part of the organization. It wasn’t necessarily that somebody came and begged them. They organised themselves. They joined. They refused to be plates on a back burner in the movement. And so a lot of them talk about joining the movement on the first Ogoni day. We’re talking January 4, 1993, when all of Ogoni was called to Bori to this day. And so Ken Saro Wiwa speaks. He, along with all other people who were already working on this behind the scenes, introduced the movement to the Ogoni people. The women are there. They hear. And just even from that very day, from that very meeting, the women organized themselves, decided that they were going to call their own organizations, their own groups from their different villages, and make sure that they remained organised. And they have seen themselves as the leaders, particularly in terms of elongating the movement, ever since then.

…I don’t necessarily have a list of all of the forward leaders. I will start with how it is organized, and how they started to organize. And so my understanding is that there were several women who met on that Ogoni day, and thereafter they started meeting. They decided amongst themselves who would be in charge of a FOWA in each kingdom. So you had who would be in charge of FOWA Gokana, who would be in charge of FOWA Bententhai, and Yokana. I might be butchering the names now. So there are five kingdoms of Ogoni, and they sought to put one FOA leader in each kingdom. So out of those leaders, they were now tasked with creating leaders in each village of their kingdom. So if we take Gokana, for example, you would have a leader of FOWA Gokana, and that leader would find leaders for each village. And within each village you would have an entire group of a secretary, Vice President, President, etc. And so that’s really what that structure looks like. And so, for instance, if we talk about FOWA Gokana, there have been five presidents as of the time that I was doing my research. And this is, I would say, updated as of 2018. And at the national level of FOWA, FOWA Ogoni, you had Dr Mrs. Ko Yang as the first leader. Then you had barista Georgina Tenalo, and she was from Bomu. Next, there was Rose Wegani, and then Rose Zoranen. And then Gloria Nwana. So those were the successive leaders of FOWA at the national level. And then, of course, there are those smaller branches as well that I mentioned.

I see, so as I think, we could probably generalize for a lot of different movements. The military government and Shell were particularly interested in arresting the men. Women were also arrested, but they were not targeted at the same level in terms of arrest as men were. So as the men were getting arrested, women’s organizing became even more important, over the course of those years of violence. Because MOSOP men really could not be physically present and out as they used to be able to be. And so women took on that role. So women would be the ones organizing. Women would be the ones, while men were in hiding, they would be the ones making sure that they were strategizing and continuing to uplift the movement. And so their role became increasingly important, particularly in those years of violence, where men were primary targets of arrests. Also, while they were organizing and strategizing, the women anyway, they were also in charge of ensuring that the men and other women who were imprisoned could eat and could sustain themselves. And so they would organize within themselves who would take food to who and to which prisons. Because these prisons were all over Nigeria, not just in Ogoni. And so they were in charge of making sure that people who were in prison stayed alive. And they were messengers across these different groups that have been dispersed as well. So I have several women who talk about the times when they would have to pretend like they knew nothing about the movement. They would travel to different parts of Ogoni and spread messages about the movement, spreading many messages about their next steps. And sometimes it would be a young woman or whatever, but their job was to act like they knew nothing, and they were clueless, and yet they were integral to the organizing, into the strategizing.

I had a follow up question. I think earlier, you mentioned that women were not as visibly targeted by Shell and the government. Why do you think that was?

Well, I want to clarify that. There are several cases, numerous cases, of women being murdered, and being physically abused and physically hurt. And I would say sexual violence was rampant among Ogoni women during this time, because of the military’s involvement in close proximity to the Ogoni people. So, when I say women weren’t physically targeted, I’m talking particularly about arrest, being in prison. But they did suffer numerous forms of violence and physical violence. And I should also mention that women were in charge of taking care of the children.  While men were hiding, women had this added burden of ensuring that the kids were eating, ensuring that they stayed together, all of these things. So for instance, in my family, in particular, my father, was in hiding throughout when I mentioned 1993 all the way until 96 when we reunited. So throughout those years, my mother was the one who was taking care of us, who was ensuring that we ate our safety, everything. And that was the case for a lot of families during this time. So, why were women not targeted in terms of arrest? I would say that that is something that we see in many different conflicts, that women tend to not be targeted in terms of being arrested. And I’m not sure that I have the answer to that. It’s just the trend that we see in many conflicts.

No, that’s very, very, important to establish, and that’s really, really insightful. I did wonder, I mean, we’ve spent a lot of time speaking to a lot of different people around just the oil prices in general. And I was going to ask, kind of, like, as an extension to this, just really thinking through the motivations for women being a part of resisting oil exploitation. Are there any other, and I wondered if there were any unique ways in which the oil crisis, I mean, this is from your own experience and your own research. If there’s anything you’ve come across, about the unique demands that women have made, or unique issues that they have raised that are particular to women in the context of the oil crisis. Is there a way in which the oil crisis uniquely affects women that would have also motivated a lot more women, you know, to also take on that movement as well.