Short biography of ken saro-wiwa executioner

Inafter having served as the Regional Commissioner for Education in the River State Cabinet, he was dismissed for his support of Ogani autonomy. One contentious issue faced by the Ogani people, that MOSOP aimed to solve, was that of the crude oil extraction in the region. Since the 's, Oganiland had been dumped with oil waste, causing irreversible environmental damage.

Further, Lugard homogenized the multiple administrative systems in the south, which he dismissed as chaotic and wasteful, but the reorganizaton resulted in increased marginalization of smaller ethnic groups. Most damaging, Lugard created a new type of indigenous ruler in the southern region modeled on the northern emir. This departure from the existing heterogeneity in southern Nigeria created a new class of rulers and bestowed on them powers that few rulers in the short biography of ken saro-wiwa executioner had traditionally possessed.

In effect, Lugard created a new class of native colonial administrators who owed their allegiance to their respective ethnic groups but derived their power, not from traditional roles, but from new roles acquired from the British administration. This short biography of ken saro-wiwa executioner and linguistic grouping of peoples into political units was not unique to the Ogoni, however, and in the aftermath of unification, many smaller ethnic groups realized that strength in numbers was the only way to secure their collective rights.

Other new ethnopolitical groups coalesced, especially in the diverse Niger Delta region, with the Ijo and the Andoni securing similar recognition from the British authorities. Larger groups in Nigeria were not immune to this consolidation of political power along similar lines. Under British rule, the Yoruba in the southwest of Nigeria transformed from a patchwork of opposing kingdoms and city-states into a major unified force in Nigerian politics, both during colonial rule and after.

Similarly, the Igbo, largely recognized as a stateless society, merged into a political force that attempted to secede from Nigeria and form the Republic of Biafra insparking a three-year civil war. For the Ogoni, the need for political influence became increasingly important. After attaining this in with the creation of an 27 Ogoni division within what was at the time the Rivers Province, Birabi and the OCU fought for increased access to colonial funds.

The s proved especially troublesome for the Ogoni. As British rule neared its end, the colonial government ceded more and more authority to the native administrations, dominated by Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa elites. Inthe British codified the three major ethnic divisions by splitting the country into three regions, each dominated by one of the major ethnic groups.

Birabi pushed for increased Ogoni participation in the new Eastern Region, which, though dominated by the Igbo, was also the most ethnically diverse and densely populated of the three regions. The OCU succeeded in obtaining some funding, especially for access to government-sponsored education for Ogoni youth. Saro-Wiwa, who enrolled at the Government College Umuahia in at age thirteen, was one of the early beneficiaries of this program.

In the mid- to late s, as Nigeria edged closer to independence, political rivalries born under the colonial administration intensified. The three largest political groups, the Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba, and Igbo, were set to dominate the political arena in the emerging state. This reality, codified by the regional boundaries the British imposed inled to increased protests among the smaller groups in the country, including the Ogoni.

In an attempt to allay minority fears, the British convened a commission headed by Sir Henry Willink in 28intending to create safeguards ensuring minority rights in independent Nigeria. The commission determined that regionalism in Nigeria would do little but destabilize the country and that constitutional safeguards specifically protecting minority rights at the national level would be the best guarantee of these liberties.

Thus, despite the protestations of many minority groups testifying before the commission and who saw that a federal solution would be the best guarantor of minority rights, the commission found that these rights would best be secured by a system created for, and dominated by, the three major groups. Biafra 29 was not that country. For him, as it was for many in Nigeria, this was not merely domination, but a form of imperialism, virtually indistinguishable from the British variety in its domination and oppression of minority rights.

The s also saw one of the most important developments for the future of Nigeria: the discovery of rich petroleum deposits in the Niger Delta. This discovery proved disastrous for the Ogoni. Inthe first commercial drilling began. This quickly transformed the Niger Delta and the Nigerian economy as a whole. The oil revenue came under the control of the ruling elites.

As government revenues came to depend almost exclusively on the petroleum sector, the Niger Delta, including Ogoni lands, became the main source of government funds, effectively subsidizing the Nigerian government and, unofficially, its corrupt officials before and especially after independence. Though oil exploitation and the destruction of the Ogoni environment are discussed in a separate chapter, the colonial government system that continued into independence ensured that the Ogoni, and most of the other ethnicities in Nigeria, saw their lands and the profits from those lands redistributed among the powerful elites that controlled the country.

Lugard began a process, continued by subsequent British administrators, which transformed the Nigerian economy and the relations among its various societies. When Nigeria became independent on October 1,tensions within the country intensified as competing groups already vying for a stake in the British colonial system fought for control and influence over a diverse, resource-rich state struggling to transform itself into a self-sufficient nation.

In the early years of Nigerian independence, the country lurched from crisis to crisis as the pains of a political system built on ethnic sectionalism and Map 1. Almost immediately after independence, the drive for the federalization of the country was renewed, culminating in with the creation of the Midwestern Region. The creation of the new region did little to alleviate ethnic or religious tension in the country.

Inthe Nigerian government undertook a census to determine, among other things, parliamentary seat allocation in anticipation of the general election. A predominantly western coalition, the Action Group AGwon This political system, which so heavily favored the Northern Region, meant that southerners found the temptation irresistible to remedy this inequity with creative census procedures.

As a result, the NPC government ordered a second census to be taken, where the population numbers in the 32 north were adjusted to meet the reported growth in the south, thus maintaining the status quo in parliament. Both the general election and the Western Region election were as corrupt as the census. UPGA activists were arrested en masse in the north; in one case in Kano UPGA campaigners were detained, with some held until after the elections and others released and ordered to return to their homes in the south.

UPGA candidates were denied access to the ballots, resulting in The next election, in the Western Region, further reinforced this distrust. And win they did! In some cases, the results were declared before the ballot boxes were opened! When results were announced, both sides declared victory, resulting in widespread violence that amounted to a veritable civil war within the Western Region.

It was into this political, social, and cultural maelstrom that Kenule Saro-Wiwa was born on October 10, Tsaro, or Saro, is the Ogoni honorific for a firstborn son of the family. He changed his last name to Saro-Wiwa sometime in the early s, apparently for esthetic purposes. Unsurprisingly, his birth was not a simple one, and he was left for dead five times perhaps due to a congenital heart disorder, but he managed to rally each time.

Despite the circumstances of his birth, he was a well-adjusted child. He walked at seven months and remained an only child until the age of seven. He was the 35 pride of his family, which later included a sister, Barine, and a brother, Owens. The Ogoni, like many other societies in the Niger Delta, relied heavily on agriculture and aquaculture.

Because of this, the traditional education system in Ogoni focused on educating the youth for a life of subsistence farming. One of the primary ways Ogoni youth claimed their place in adult society was through the Yaa tradition. Yaa was a ritualistic passage to adulthood in Ogoni society, focusing on the militaristic aspects of defending Ogoni territory along with cultivating respect for the economic and cultural mainstays defining Ogoni culture.

This coming-of-age ritual was of paramount importance in traditional Ogoni society but was being supplanted by colonial education. SaroWiwa therefore had a hybrid early education: he was enrolled at the Native Authority School in Bori while participating in the traditional educational activities of the Yaa tradition. Despite his weak heart, he excelled at many of these exercises, especially palm wine tapping and various athletic practices.

However, by the time Saro-Wiwa was an older child, the Yaa tradition was in decline, being supplanted by formal schooling, and it is not clear whether he completed the formal rituals before he was sent to Government College Umuahia GCU in at the age of fourteen. One of his childhood 36 contemporaries, the Ogoni historian Sonpie KponeTonwe, completed the rite in the early s, stating that the tradition went into steep decline shortly after, with the next performance not held until the mids, and the last known enactment in Inhe spoke to Saro-Wiwa about documenting the practice with an eye to reviving it and incorporating it into Ogoni education.

It was not until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, after Nigeria had been incorporated into 37 the British Empire, that colonial administrators began to address the need for more practical education that would both provide clerks for the colonial bureaucracy and support a class of skilled artisans. The church schools were extremely deficient in this type of training, leading the British government to invest in its own schools.

The educational shift accelerated in the s; inthe colonial government passed the Education Ordinance, which, among other projects, funded the creation of Government College Umuahia, where Saro-Wiwa began his secondary school education. Before that, Saro-Wiwa was educated in his native Ogoni schools, in his native Khana language.

Only a lucky few among Nigerian youths could hope to attend the new secondary schools. In fact, he mocked many aspects of Nigerian education in his many works of fiction, as discussed in chapter 4. Saro-Wiwa left home to attend GCU in Though he was the only Ogoni in a school dominated by the Igbo, he always claimed that he felt at home there, because school policy mandated that English was the only language spoken there.

Though he was the son of an Ogoni chief, he was admitted to the school on his own merits, excelling in the entrance exam and receiving the prestigious school scholarship for By the 38 time he graduated inhe had amassed a collection of academic and athletic honors, including prizes for history and English; he was captain of the table tennis team and a starting member of the cricket team.

It was the English language that made him feel Nigerian, and not just Ogoni. In later years, he claimed it was this experience at Umuahia that gave him the hope that Nigeria could rise above its ethnic primacy and create a culture that was truly Nigerian. He embraced English as a way to communicate to the widest possible audience, both in Nigeria and abroad.

English became an important tool that SaroWiwa later wielded in his attempts to show all Nigerians that there existed a quintessentially Nigerian culture that could be more inclusive than blood kinship or ethnicity. However, at GCU, Saro-Wiwa realized that the English language could unite the disparate ethnic groups and create a sense of community beyond the ethnic rivalries.

This belief would follow him throughout most of his life, especially in his most popular work, Basi and Company, discussed in chapter 4. At UI, Saro-Wiwa continued his academic excellence and cultural contributions. He won the English Department Prize in and and a university scholarship in During —65 he also served as chairman of Mellanby Hall.

Saro-Wiwa had a much harder time breaking into student government at UI than he did with academics. There was only one other Ogoni student in the school and none on the faculty or staff. As a result, Saro-Wiwa was considered one of the Igbo, as all Easterners were called. That year, the entire elected Executive was solidly Yoruba. I believed that the Yoruba students were so ashamed of 40 this that the following year they did not contest any post at all, enabling a minority student to win.

However, it was his love of drama that would dominate his life at university and his later career as a film producer and activist. The university also had a traveling troupe called Theatre-on-Wheels, with which Saro-Wiwa reprised his role in performances in Lagos, Ilorin, Kaduna, Kano, Benin, and Enugu, among other cities across Nigeria.

Theatre-on-Wheels received much acclaim, both at home and abroad, collaborating with the prestigious Nottingham Playhouse when they sent a troupe to Nigeria in featuring the young Dame Judi Dench. Despite his successes in the theater, he had harbored political ambitions from a young age. The loss of the student union leadership office showed him that Nigeria was entrenched in ethnic rivalry that was unlikely to just disappear on its own.

Even before his time at the University of Ibadan, he had taught at Government 41 College Umuahia, and at Stella Maris College in Port Harcourt and believed that education was the key to resolving cultural conflict. Therefore, he dedicated himself to teaching at UI, and later at the University of Nigeria—Nsukka, in order to help combat these rivalries.

Despite this intention, the Nigerian Civil War of cut short his ambitions of academic life. When the war broke out, he was teaching at the University of Nigeria— Nsukka, which was quickly renamed the University of Biafra. This put him in personal peril due to his support for Nigeria in the conflict; obviously he was unable to continue working at a university in the center of the Biafran nationalist movement.

When the Nigerian military government, then short biography of ken saro-wiwa executioner by Major General Yakubu Gowon, transformed the country into a federal republic consisting of twelve states, Saro-Wiwa saw an opportunity to correct the disproportionate power the major ethnic group held in the country and better integrate the Ogoni.

He claimed an influential role in this process. In his memoirs, Saro-Wiwa portrayed himself as a loyal Nigerian citizen trapped inside the secessionist Biafran state. Saro-Wiwa managed to position himself as a leader of the Ogoni community within the new Rivers State. After fleeing Biafra, he returned with the conquering Nigerian military and established himself as civilian administrator of the oil depot city of Bonny.

His new position as a leader was made challenging because of some significant events occurring just before the end of colonial rule, however. On January 10,the first meeting of the British Commonwealth prime ministers held outside the United Kingdom convened in Lagos. Saro-Wiwa was then in his last year at the University of Ibadan. Like many in the country, the events of that night took him by surprise.

I did not believe it. Students forgot themselves in their joy; they embraced and hugged one another, male and female alike. The fact that many of them were Igbo was the product of British colonial policies that favored Igbo access to school and military institutions and not an explicit attempt to form an exclusively Igbo conspiracy. This argument did not persuade other Nigerians, especially in the north, who saw the coup as a southern plot to take over the country.

For SaroWiwa, the northerners victimized by the coup consisted of over two hundred unique ethnic, language, and religious groups, and could not be thought of as a single 46 entity. The south was equally heterogeneous, but the Igbo and Yoruba together dominated the political sphere in the south of the country at the expense of the Ogoni, Mbembe, Ijo, and others.

The fact that Orizu, who was Igbo, and President Azikiwe did nothing to attempt a continuation of civilian rule in the wake of the failed coup helped reinforce notions of a broad Igbo conspiracy. To make matters worse, the coup plotters themselves faced no punishment for their mutiny, despite their arrest and the fact that their actions constituted a capital offense.

Saro-Wiwa sympathized with Ironsi, reasoning that if the new leader executed the plotters, many in the country who saw the majors as heroes would rebel against him. If he released them, those aggrieved by the coup would act in much the same way. SaroWiwa saw Ironsi as a man in an impossible situation, rather than as an active manipulator of the ethnic tensions engulfing the country.

Ironsi, who began his tenure as head of state in an unstable situation, had only exacerbated matters in his attempts to stabilize the country. On May 24,Ironsi issued Decree No. This move stripped the regional leaders of their power, grouping the various areas of the country into provinces. Additionally, all appointments to the civil service bureaucracy and the military would now be handled by the central government in Lagos.

The reaction to this decree was immediate. Riots erupted across the Northern Region, targeting Igbo and other easterners, whom northerners referred to as yameri. Some in the north maintained that the riots that began in May were spontaneous and sparked by Igbo hubris, as they were seen to gloat about their takeover of Nigeria. One apocryphal story placed the blame on an Igbo baker in the city of Kaduna, who adorned his bread with the famous painting of St.

George slaying the dragon. However, these riots were far from spontaneous. It was definitely carefully calculated and was dastardly. The night before, after a party organized at the home of the military governor of the Western Region, Lieutenant Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi, Ironsi and Fajuyi were both abducted and killed, though confirmation of their deaths would be withheld for six months.

The coup only intensified the violence against the Igbo in the north. Between August and September, the Igbo suffered further massacres in northern Nigeria; with estimates ranging from 50, tokilled. Ojukwu, still governor of the Eastern Region, called on Igbo living in other parts of Nigeria to return to the east. Up to two million people fled to the Igbo heartland, and Ojukwu began to prepare for secession claiming that easterners could no longer live in peace in Nigeria.

Saro-Wiwa, perhaps concerned for his personal safety, boarded a transport to Port Harcourt. It was a sorry sight to see women, their lifelong belongings packed up in shabby bundles, children tied to their backs, fighting their way into the. In Januaryeastern and federal leaders met at the resort town of Aburi, near Accra. Though the meetings ended with an agreement, both sides later ignored the provisions in the Aburi Accords, especially the requirement that any decision affecting the entire country be agreed upon by all the military governors.

In March, Ojukwu subordinated all federal government offices in the east, including the police and tax collection agencies, to the Eastern Region. This move made the Eastern Region a de facto autonomous region within Nigeria, prompting Colonel Gowon to impose a naval blockade. The FMG had successfully isolated the Eastern Region from the rest of the country and the world by closing the international airports in Port Harcourt and Calabar and suspending all postal service to the east, including money transfers, thereby freezing government employee salaries.

Ntieyong U. Akpan, head of the civil service in the east throughout the Nigerian Civil War, cited the behavior of these Civil Defence personnel Map 3. In May, Gowon attempted some conciliatory steps toward Ojukwu, such as lifting the blockade. After those were met with contempt, Gowon issued Decree No. Gowon aimed to create a more manageable government and end regional strife by creating smaller political entities that would wield significantly less power than the large regions.

The decree had the added effect of further weakening support for the Igbo-dominated regional government in the east. Ojukwu pounced on the decree as a casus belli and three days later announced his secession from Nigeria, transforming the Eastern Region into the Republic of Biafra. Eastern Nigeria, though dominated by the Igbo, was the most populous and heterogeneous region in the country.

The federal and Biafran sides both needed to secure the support of the ethnic groups in the region. Others, like Saro-Wiwa, detested the idea of Biafra and 52 felt that their best bet for the future lay with Gowon and his twelve-state solution. The fact that the minorities did not wholeheartedly commit to Biafra made them targets for the Biafran Civil Defence.

However, the fact that they were from the Eastern Region made them yameri in northern eyes. As a result, they were targeted by both Nigeria and Biafra. When the war erupted in JuneSaro-Wiwa was a graduate assistant at the University of Nigeria—Nsukka, which was quickly renamed the University of Biafra. He made plans to leave as soon as the fighting reached the city in early July.

Saro-Wiwa was in a precarious position as an Ogoni who was vehemently against Biafra as a nation and against Ojukwu as a leader. However, he was trapped in Biafra and fled to Bane in the Ogoni homeland near Port Harcourt, where he remained until September. In the summer ofBiafran forces launched an assault across the River Niger and conquered the Midwestern Region in a lightning assault, renaming the territory the Republic of Benin.

However, the small Biafran force, led by Banjo, could not hope to hold the vast territory it conquered. By the end of August, the Biafrans were ousted from the territories they held to 53 the west of the Niger. More important, the Biafran short biography of ken saro-wiwa executioner diverted both troops and attention from the south of the country, where at the end of July, the Nigerian navy and army launched the largest amphibious invasion conducted by an African military and captured the key oil depot at Bonny, at the easternmost mouth of the Niger Delta.

During this turmoil, Saro-Wiwa still worked to create some semblance of a life for himself. However, despite being a prolific writer, piecing together the story of his personal life during this period is no easy task. The bulk of his work consisted of fiction during his early career, and later in life he shifted to the polemic work that would leave his most lasting legacy.

He wrote very little about his personal life, and he never mentioned his relationship with his wife, Maria, who was only seventeen years old when the war broke out and presumably when they married. He only mentioned her briefly in relating how they clandestinely fled Biafran territory. Their eldest son, Ken Wiwa, in his memoir In the Shadow of a Saint provides very little information except what his father had previously published; the only biographical information he provides is to confirm that he was born in Immune from the euphoria engulfing Biafra in the summer ofSaro-Wiwa made plans, along with Maria, to flee from his home in Bane to Bonny.

SaroWiwa set out on the night of September 23,via canoe, as Bonny was reachable only via air or water, as 54 it remains in Saro-Wiwa made the journey without incident and arrived in Bonny a few days later. After being detained briefly in Bonny, Saro-Wiwa journeyed to Lagos and joined other activists from the Rivers region who were forming a government in exile for the newly created Rivers State.

This group, which they named the Rivers State Study Group, influenced the Nigerian government to install the Rivers State government during the war. Saro-Wiwa was appointed civil administrator of Bonny. His return to the town was delayed for several months due to intense fighting, as the Biafrans attempted to retake the strategic oil facility.

When he finally arrived in JanuarySaroWiwa found that the city had suffered tremendously from the fighting. As a result, the city was entirely dependent on the military for living essentials, as it could be supplied only from Lagos. Saro-Wiwa immediately embarked on several programs to ensure that life in the city would be bearable until the war ended.

He reopened the schools in the area, which had been closed since the war began, and sent the more advanced students, who could not be taught in the city, to Lagos to continue their schooling. As with any wartime frontline city, relations between the military and the civilians could occasionally turn tense. Saro-Wiwa used his rapport with both military and civilian officials to minimize the friction.

One of the key commanders in the area, Colonel later Lieutenant General Ipoola Akinrinade, who became chief of army staff inbecame a lifelong friend. Saro-Wiwa learned more than the basics of administrative work during his time in Bonny. More important, he laid the foundation of the Rivers State administration. More From encyclopedia. Sarnoff, Liz Elizabeth Sarnoff.

Sarnoff, David Sarnoff, David. Sarnoff Corporation. Sarno, Ronald Anthony. Sarno, John E. Sarnelli, Gennaro Maria, Bl. Sarna, Nahum M. Sarna, Jonathan Daniel. Sarna, Jonathan D. Sarna, Jonathan D aniel.

Short biography of ken saro-wiwa executioner

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