Twenty Five years ago, Nigeria’s Niger Delta region heated the international headlines as nine Nigerian environmental activists, including a popular writer Ken Saro Wiwa, accused of murder were executed by the then Nigerian military dictator Sani Abacha’s regime.
Saro Wiwa, tired of seeing the environmental pollution and the exploitation of natural resources in his native Ogoniland, founded the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) in 1990.
Eight other leaders worked alongside him, Saturday Dobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel Gbooko, Paul Levera, Felix Nuate, Baribor Bera, Barinem Kiobel, and John Kpuine.
Their deaths sparked an international outrage and diplomatic sanctions that have since been resolved.
Meanwhile, the reason for the environmentalist’s activism which put them in Sani Abacha’s execution list still lingers till this day.
Environmental pollution and the exploitation of natural resources in the Niger delta which produces the west African country’s number one income earner, Petroleum, has continued.
In 2011 the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) released the first scientific analysis of pollution that confirmed the area which covers nine coastal southern Nigerian states had indeed turned into an ecological disaster.
However, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari In 2016, launched a $1 billion oil clean-up exercise in the Niger Delta promising to reverse the damage and restore the ecosystems.
But observers say very little has been done and the pollution has persisted.
However, the Ogoni people are yet to be satisfied with the ongoing environmental cleanup recommended by the UN. They still maintain that Ken Saro-Wiwa and the eight Ogoni leaders were innocent.
They have vowed to carry on with the struggle until the Ogoni Nine are exonerated and their demands which include ensuring a fair share in their oil wealth, providing community projects, and respecting environmental laws are fully met.
The Ogoni agitation is said to be responsible for the Niger Delta crisis, which led to various rebel groups fighting the government. Some of the groups destroyed oil infrastructure, carried out kidnappings of oil workers causing a considerable drop in Nigeria’s oil production. At the end of 2006, the Nigerian government signed a peace agreement in the region.
Ken Saro-Wiwa once said: “I am more dangerous dead”, a quote that remains true 25 years after his death.
