The Republic

In 2006, Nigerian-British sculptor, Sokari Douglas-Camp, was commissioned by human and environment rights organization, Platform, to create a work of art in honour of the memory of Ken Saro-Wiwa. Douglas-Camp created a life-sized replica of a Nigerian steel bus, called ‘Battle Bus: Living Memorial for Ken Saro-Wiwa’. It was an artistic symbol of movement and change. In 2015, 20 years after the execution of the Ogoni Nine, Platform planned to commemorate the Ogoni Nine execution and wanted Douglas-Camp’s Battle Bus to feature at the event held in Bori, Saro-Wiwa’s hometown. But when the battle bus arrived at the Lagos Seaport that year, it was impounded by the port authorities.It is now 2025*, nearly 30 years since the executions happened. Presidents have come and gone; Niger-Delta resistance has, arguably, become more violent and more commercially motivated; public memory of the Ogoni Nine has atrophied, and the battle bus, an artistic work crafted to honour the memory of the Ogoni Nine, is still under arrest by the Nigerian authorities. What is it about Saro-Wiwa that continues to aggravate and possibly even terrify the Nigerian ruling establishment? How have the Ogoni people been able to come to terms with the execution of the Ogoni Nine, and deal with the unresolved environmental crisis caused by oil exploration till this day? What does the crisis in Ogoni and the Niger Delta more broadly tell us about what it means to be Nigerian?In this episode, our final of the season, Wale Lawal finds some answers. Learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠republic.com.ng/podcasts/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.*Note: this podcast was produced in 2024; as such, when Wale says ‘next year’, he is referring to 2025.

On 22 May 1995, the final phase of the Ogoni Nine trial began. The Ogoni Nine had been in detention since May 1994. Ken Saro-Wiwa’s health was declining, and had taken a turn for the worse. Still, the Special Military Tribunal resumed trial. With their lawyers, Femi Falana and Gani Fawehinmi having retired (due to being frustrated by the government), the Ogoni Nine were left without legal representation. If they were found guilty of murder, they would get the capital sentence of death. This was all anyone in Nigeria at the time could think of. After the courts pronounced the Ogoni Nine guilty, public attention turned to whether the Abacha regime would truly go ahead to execute them.Many Nigerians and international observers pushed for the Abacha regime to recall its sentence but on November 10 1995, they woke up to devastating news. From their homes, Nigerians wondered: despite the worldwide appeals, why did Abacha stick to his decision to sentence Saro-Wiwa and the other eight Ogonis to death? What message was Abacha trying to send to the world?In this episode, Wale Lawal finds some answers. Learn more at⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠republic.com.ng/podcasts/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

In our last episode, we discussed the murder of four Ogoni chiefs, Albert Badey, Edward Kobani, Samuel Orage, and Theophilus Orage, at Giokoo on 21 May 1994. We also discussed how their deaths emboldened the General Sani Abacha regime to arrest various Ogonis, especially those who were members of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP). Following the murders of the Ogoni chiefs, Rivers State military administrator, Lieutenant Colonel Dauda Musa Komo, and the Abacha regime finally had their way in to disrupt MOSOP. On May 22 1994, Komo held a press conference, where he accused MOSOP of the murders, using a bag of bones retrieved from the scene of the crime. But how did the government decide who to arrest? And what can the nature of the arrests that followed Komo’s press conference tell us about the government’s true intentions? In this episode, Wale Lawal finds some answers. Learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠republic.com.ng/podcasts/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

On 19 January 1994, General Abacha, who had been Nigeria’s head of state for just two months, sent a federal ministerial committee to Ogoniland to meet with Ken Saro-Wiwa in Saro-Wiwa's hometown of Bori. The primary mission of the committee was to investigate the oil crisis in the Niger Delta region and make a report on how to solve the crisis. The committee consisted of Alex Ibru, the federal minister of internal affairs; Chief Donald Etiebet, the minister of petroleum resources; Melford Okilo, the minister of tourism and commerce; and Lieutenant Colonel Dauda Musa Komo, the military governor of Rivers State.  Ibru, the publisher of The Guardian, one of Nigeria’s most influential newspapers at that time, was a close friend of Saro-Wiwa. Due to his friendship with Saro-Wiwa, The Guardian had given MOSOP a lot of positive coverage and publicity in the news. Saro-Wiwa imagined that with Ibru on the tour, the Ogoni cause would get the seriousness of their struggle conveyed to the country, and to Abacha. However, Lieutenant Colonel Komo who acted as the official escort and guide of the Committee, saw the tour as an opportunity to impress Abacha and show his superiors in Abuja that he had Saro-Wiwa and the Ogonis under his control. With such differing goals between Saro-Wiwa and Lieutenant Komo, what kind of collision was about to happen? In this episode, Wale Lawal finds some answers. Learn more at ⁠⁠⁠⁠republic.com.ng/podcasts/⁠⁠⁠⁠.

The Ogonis are a prominent ethnic group in the Niger Delta. And in the 1950s, the oil wealth found in Ogoniland 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.  Instead, 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? In this episode, Wale Lawal finds some answers. Learn more at ⁠⁠⁠republic.com.ng/podcasts/⁠⁠⁠.

1973 began with Ken Saro-Wiwa being more publicly critical than ever of the Nigerian government he was a part of. Increasingly, he served two masters: he was a government commissioner and he was also advocating for the autonomy of the Ogoni people over their political and economic affairs. Fresh out of a civil war, Nigeria’s authorities were intolerant of any form of agitation or activism, especially for ethnic autonomy.  But Saro-Wiwa persisted. He wrote petitions against Shell, and published articles like ‘Genocide in Nigeria: the Ogoni Tragedy’. Through these acts, Saro-Wiwa effectively crossed a line and the government responded in kind. In March 1973, a radio bulletin announced that the Rivers State Government had fired Saro-Wiwa. What did Saro-Wiwa do next? Who was Isaac Jasper Adaka Boro why does he loom large in the origins of Saro-Wiwa’s eventual activism?  In this episode, Wale Lawal finds some answers. Learn more at ⁠⁠republic.com.ng/podcasts/⁠⁠. The Republic is currently on an editorial break and show notes will be available on our website by 31 January 2025.

In photos of the January 4 1993 Ogoni rally, Ken Saro-Wiwa stands out. You can sense his passion, his energy but more curiously his pull. These are very dangerous times to be protesting. Only days before, the Babangida military regime had placed a ban on public gatherings. So what was it about the Ogoni movement that made it (to borrow from the American writer, Toni Cade Bambara ) ‘irresistible’ to Saro-Wiwa? Saro-Wiwa was pretty well off and could have lived a much more convenient, non-political life. At the same time, Nigeria is a highly unequal society where the wealthy are often out of touch. This was true even back then; so what was it about Saro-Wiwa that made him connect not just materially with Ogoni people but philosophically, almost spiritually; enough to make them risk even death in joining him on this march?In this episode, Wale Lawal finds some answers. Learn more at ⁠republic.com.ng/podcasts/⁠.

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. What drove Abacha to make this offer? And can you guess Saro-Wiwa’s response? In this episode, Wale Lawal finds some answers. Learn more at republic.com.ng/podcasts/. The Republic is currently on an editorial break and show notes will be available on our website by 31 January 2025.

African history is not yet mainstream and we're on a mission to change this. The Republic is a miniseries covering key events and figures in African history. Our second season focuses on the life and legacy of Ken Saro-Wiwa, a writer and one of nine non-violent Ogoni activists the General Sani Abacha military government brutally executed in 1995. The Ogoni are an ethnic group situated in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. For years, they have suffered pollution and environmental degradation stemming from crude oil extraction on their land. Saro-Wiwa’s protests against oil companies such as Shell, including his leadership of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), frustrated the Abacha government, which relied heavily on oil exports. On 10 November 1995, after controversial court trials, the Abacha regime sentenced Saro-Wiwa along with eight other Ogoni activists to death by hanging. The eight were: Saturday Dobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel Gbooko, Paul Levera, Felix Nuate, Baribor Bera, Barinem Kiobel, and John Kpuine. Their brutal arrest and murder marked a pivotal moment not only in Nigeria’s history but also in the history of global environmentalism. Nearly 30 years since the Ogoni 9 execution, host Wale Lawal traces the life and legacy of Saro-Wiwa, and the implications of the Ogoni 9 execution. You’ll travel to the Niger Delta and hear about life in Nigeria under Abacha’s regime, the political rise of Ken Saro-Wiwa, the troubled history of oil in the Niger Delta, the arrest and trial of the Ogoni 9, and how Abacha’s execution of the Ogoni 9 continues to shape the politics of Nigeria’s oil wealth and what it means to be Nigerian today. Learn more about The Republic at ⁠republic.com.ng/podcasts

IBB had just stepped down from the presidential seat and handed the responsibility over to the technocrat, Ernest Shonekan. Despite being unpopular (at least compared to MKO Abiola), Shonekan promised to serve Nigeria with all his heart and to be faithful, loyal and honest. Unfortunately for him, he was handed a country in turmoil. The Shonekan administration might have been ineffectual, but it gave way to the Sani Abacha regime, one of Nigeria’s most oppressive military administrations. Buckle up as we enter the final stretch of MKO Abiola’s presidential campaign. What do we call this chapter in the story of Nigeria’s quest for democracy? In this episode, Wale Lawal finds some answers. Learn more at ⁠⁠⁠republic.com.ng/podcasts/⁠⁠⁠.