Early life
Kenule Saro-Wiwa was born in Bori, near Port Harcourt, Nigeria, on 10 October 1941. He was the son of Chief Jim Wiwa, a forest ranger who held a title in the Nigerian chieftaincy system, and his third wife Widu. He officially changed his name to Saro-Wiwa after the Nigerian Civil War. He was married to Maria Saro-Wiwa.[8] His father's hometown was the village of Bane, Ogoniland, whose residents speak the Khana dialect of the Ogoni language. He spent his childhood in an Anglican home and eventually proved himself to be an excellent student. He received primary education at a Native Authority school in Bori, then attended secondary school at Government College Umuahia. A distinguished student, he was captain of the table tennis team and amassed school prizes in History and English.
On the completion of his secondary education, he obtained a scholarship to study English at the University of Ibadan. At Ibadan, he plunged into academic and cultural interests, winning departmental prizes in 1963 and 1965. He was also affiliated with a travelling drama troupe that performed in Kano, Benin, Ilorin and Lagos and collaborated with the Nottingham Playhouse theater group.
He briefly became a teaching assistant at the University of Lagos and later served as an African literature lecturer at University of Nigeria, Nsukka until the civil war broke out; he supported the Federal Government and so had to leave the region and return to Bori. On his journey to Port-Harcourt, he witnessed the multitudes of refugees returning to the East, a scene he described as a "sorry sight to see." Three days after his arrival in Bonny, it fell to federal troops. His family then stayed in Bonny while he travelled back to Lagos and took a position at the University of Lagos, although this did not last long as he was called back to Bonny to serve as the port city's Civilian Administrator.[9]
During the Nigerian Civil War he positioned himself as an Ogoni leader dedicated to the Federal cause. He followed his job as an administrator with an appointment as a commissioner in the old Rivers State. His best known novel, Sozaboy: A Novel in Rotten English (1985), tells the story of a naive village boy recruited to the army during the Nigerian Civil War of 1967 to 1970, and intimates the political corruption and patronage in Nigeria's military regime at the time. His war diaries, On a Darkling Plain (1989), document his experiences during the war.
In the early 1970s, he served as the Regional Commissioner for Education in the Rivers State[10] Cabinet, but was dismissed in 1973 because of his support for Ogoni autonomy.[11]
He was also a successful businessman and television producer. His satirical television series, Basi & Company, was wildly popular, with an estimated audience of 30 million.[12] In the late 1970s, he established a number of successful business ventures in retail and real estate, and during the 1980s concentrated primarily on his writing, journalism and television production.[10]
He became involved in the political arena in 1977, running as the candidate to represent Ogoni in the Constituent Assembly; he lost the election by a narrow margin. It was during this time he had a falling out with his friend Edwards Kobani.[13]
His intellectual work was interrupted in 1987 when he re-entered the political scene, having been appointed by the newly installed dictator Ibrahim Babangida to aid the country's transition to democracy.[14] However, he resigned because he felt Babangida's supposed plans for a return to democracy were disingenuous. His sentiments were proven correct in the coming years, as Babangida failed to relinquish power: In 1993, Babangida annulled Nigeria's general elections that would have transferred power to a civilian government, sparking mass civil unrest and eventually forcing him to step down, at least officially, that same year.[15]
Works
Saro-Wiwa's works include television, drama and prose writing.[16] His earlier works from the 1970s to the 1980s were mostly satirical displays that portray a counter-image of Nigerian society.[17] His later writings were more inspired by political dimensions such as environmental and social justice than satire.[18]
Transistor Radio, one of his best-known plays,[17] was written for a revue during his university days at Ibadan but still resonated well with Nigerian society. A radio adaptation of the play was produced in 1972 and, in 1985, he produced Basi and Company, a television adadption which ran until 1990. He included the play in Four Farcical Plays and Basi and Company: Four Television Plays. A farcical comedy,[17] the show chronicles city life and is anchored by the protagonist, Basi, a resourceful and street-wise character looking for ways to achieve his goal of obtaining millions, which always ends up as an elusive mission.
Activism
In 1990, he began devoting most of his time to human rights and environmental causes, particularly in the land settled by the Ogoni people.[21] He was one of the earliest members of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), which advocated for the rights of the Ogoni people. The MOSOP crafted the Ogoni Bill of Rights which set out the movement's demands, including increased autonomy for the Ogoni people, a fair share of the proceeds of oil extraction, and remediation of environmental damage to Ogoni lands.[24] In particular, MOSOP struggled against the degradation of Ogoni lands by Royal Dutch Shell.[25]
In 1992, he was imprisoned for several months by the Nigerian military government without trial.[26][27]
Arrest and execution
He was arrested again and detained by Nigerian authorities in June 1993 but was released after a month.[32] On 21 May 1994, four Ogoni chiefs (all on the conservative side of a schism within MOSOP over strategy) were brutally murdered.[33] Saro-Wiwa had been denied entry to Ogoniland on the day of the murders, but he was arrested and accused of inciting them. He denied the charges but was imprisoned for more than a year before being found guilty and sentenced to death by a specially convened tribunal.[34] The same happened to eight other MOSOP leaders who, along with Saro-Wiwa, became known as the Ogoni Nine.[35]
Some of the defendants' lawyers resigned in protest against the alleged rigging of the trial by the Abacha regime. The resignations left the defendants to their own means against the tribunal, which continued to bring witnesses to testify against Saro-Wiwa and his peers. Many of these supposed witnesses later admitted that they had been bribed by the Nigerian government to support the criminal allegations. At least two witnesses who testified that Saro-Wiwa was involved in the murders of the Ogoni elders later recanted, stating that they had been bribed with money and offers of jobs with Shell to give false testimony, in the presence of Shell's lawyer.
