General Sani Abacha, backed by a small band of military officers, in November 1995 ordered the execution of renowned human rights crusader, Ken Saro-Wiwa and 9 others despite local and international condemnation.
Click here to download the dossier detailing the execution.
For this sordid act and blatant abuse of power, Nigeria was suspended from the Commonwealth and treated like a leper by the international community for years.
Now 17 years after the execution was carried out on November 10,1995, Premium Times, an online newsgroup has obtained and released a dossier detailing the execution.
The document shows that the military junta decided to go ahead with the execution of the 9 Ogboni leaders to prove to the whole world that authoritarian regime was bold and courageous and not made up of weaklings
An excerpt from the final meeting where the decision to hang Mr. Saro-Wiwa and eight of his associates was taken, said, two days before the execution, Mr. Abacha told members of the Provisional Ruling Council(PRC), the regime’s highest decision making body, that the activists deserved no sympathy, and that hanging them will stem further discontent and prove to the world the regime was bold and courageous.
“He was of the view that no sympathy should be shown on the convicts so that the sentence will be a lesson to everybody. He stated that the Ogoni issue had lingered on for a very long time and should be addressed once and for all,” said the late General Mr. Abacha at the meeting.
The former head of state opined that Saro-Wiwa was a foreign agent used to destabilize Nigeria, while the Provisional Ruling Council branded Mr. Saro-Wiwa a “separatist” who cloaked himself as an environmental activist, but whose true intention was to split the country and subvert its authority.
Members of the PRC at the time were Mr. Abacha; General Patrick Aziza (Minister of Communications under Abacha); Major Gen. Tajudeen Olarenwaju (GOC); General Abdulsalami Abubakar (Chief of Defence Staff); Lt. General Oladipo Diya (Chief of General Staff); Maj. Gen. Victor Malu (GOC); Ibrahim Coomasie (Inspector General of Police); Mike Akhigbe (Chief of Naval Staff); Maj. General Ishaya Bamaiyi (Chief of Army Staff); Nsikak Eduok (Airforce chief); Lt. Gen. Jeremiah Useni (Minister of the Federal Capital Territory) and Michael Agbamuche (Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice).
Mr. Saro-Wiwa, a respected writer, activist and environmental campaigner, had been tried and sentenced to death by a military tribunal set-up by the regime, which accused him and 9 others of masterminding the killings of four prominent Ogoni leaders – charges they forcefully denied.
The charges were widely viewed as framed to silence Mr. Saro-Wiwa’s campaign against the exploitation and degradation of the Ogoni land by international oil majors, especially Shell.
But while a global campaign to block the implementation of the tribunal’s verdict intensified, the repressive junta, staged a fast-tracked execution of the ruling, with a gruesome hanging of the nine leaders.
Others killed were Saturday Dobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel Gbooko, Paul Levera, Felix Nuate, Baribor Bera, Barinem Kiobel, and John Kpuine.
By Abass Ogundipe