An ocean of human faces started converging as early as 5: 00am in their anxiety to secure vantage positions. Amongst them were human rights activists, local and international journalists and observers, members of Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), friends and family members. The crowd was predominantly Ogonis who did not know what to expect. It was judgment day for their heroes. It was on the 2nd of November 1995. Ken Saro-Wiwa, Baribor Bera, Daniel Gboko, Nordu Eewo, Felix Nuateh, Saturday Doobee, John Kpuinee, Barinem Kiobel and Paul Levura had all been standing trial at a special military tribunal headed by Justice Ibrahim Auta for several months.

The rectangular tribunal hall was dead silent such that if a pin had dropped on the floor it would have made an unusual loud echo. For all its length, the tribunal sat at the former Rivers State House of Assembly in Port Harcourt, the capital city of Rivers State - the premier oil producing state of Nigeria. The decision and outcome of the pronouncement of Ibrahim Auta and his colleagues is history – even though it is a recurrent and bleeding history.

In recalling this sad chapter in modern political history, it is important to recall the fact that Ken Saro-Wiwa accepted the evil verdict with a conviction that the fate of the Nigerian oil sector, multinationals that operates in the Niger Delta, the rural people in the area and other oppressed peoples of Africa would never be the same again. The response of Saro-Wiwa to the kangaroo trial and mugged tribunal had come to stay with Nigeria like bad omen cologne, and as a mirror held against the face of the monster ($hell) at a New York District Court recently:

“My lord, we all stand before history…I repeat that we all stand before history. I and my colleagues are not the only ones on trial. $hell is here on trial and it is as well that it is represented by counsel said to be holding a watching brief. The company has, indeed, ducked this particular trial, but its day will surely come and the lessons learnt here may prove useful to it for there is no doubt in my mind that the ecological war the company has waged in the delta will be called to question sooner than later and the crimes of that war duly punished. The crime of the company's dirty wars against the Ogoni people will also be punished.

$hell did not have its day in court but it could not succeed to avoid appearing before justice. It managed to broker a negotiated an out-of-court-settlement, which has equally provoked a debate on what, is the true meaning and implication of out-of court-settlement amongst Ogoni people and other groups from the Niger Delta. We embarked upon an internet trailing of the CCR for an interview (questions and responses) via email; the trailing of CCR was necessitated by the barrage of criticism that followed the settlement.

Mr. Barilera Ipaah wrote on an Ogoni internet news and information sharing blog: “we all woke up one beautiful morning and saw that it's a done deal, $15.5m is the price tag and the plaintiffs are happy. Everyman has a right to his opinion and it will be stupid to challenge that. $hell is boasting that she is not guilty but bought the lawsuit on humanitarian grounds. So if $hell is not guilty in Ken's case and she can not be charged, where will $hell be guilty in the Ogoni case - the several thousands that lost their lives in this matter? The precedent here is that every subsequent law suit against $hell is equal to settlement, not JUSTICE.”
  Mr. Ken Wiwa, son of late Ken Saro-Wiwa, spent fourteen years fighting to establish that his father was unjustly killed.
 

While Ipaah does not support the settlement because he thinks that the link between it and the broader agitation of the Ogoni ethnic nationality is not distinct, Annkio Briggs, spokesperson for the Ijaw Republican Assembly, said she respects the right of the Saro-Wiwa family to take what decision they consider proper and does not think it is about money. "But having said that," she went on, "I really wish the trial had been allowed to go on to its very conclusion in view of what Ken Saro-Wiwa represents not only to the Ogoni people, but all the oppressed peoples of the Niger Delta. With the still born nature of what transpired, we have been denied the opportunity for the revelation of the many atrocities of $hell, which Ken himself, spoke about in his famous last statement during the trial. This is certainly not the end of the matter."
But the key that should unlock clarity in the analysis of the whole settlement is that the Wiwa versus $hell case was pursued on the basis of individuals to seek redress for personal harms, injuries and violations. This directly explains an underlining statement issued by the attorneys on behalf of the plaintiffs showing the line between their claims and the broader Ogoni struggle. The read in part as follows:

“We are also pleased that, although this settlement is only for our clients’ own claims and they did not negotiate on behalf of the Ogoni people, this settlement has the potential to benefit thousands of other people in Ogoni. The Ogoni people have many outstanding issues with $hell, and it is $hell’s responsibility to resolve those issues with the Ogoni people themselves. The Plaintiffs do not speak for the Ogoni people, nor have they attempted to resolve those issues. One of the aspects of the settlement is to establish The Kiisi Trust. “Kiisi” means “progress” in the Ogoni languages.”
 
A woman walks along an oil pipeline near Shell's Utorogu flow station in Warri, Nigeria Photo: AP

It is worth acknowledging that the Wiwa family did not embark on the process of bringing $hell to justice secretly; they actually encouraged victims to individually join in the process of seeking justice. Painfully though, this process was almost marred because of internal politics by activists and within Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP). Credit should also be given to the initiators of the lawsuit as this settlement leaves in the legal-sand, an interesting precedence for the collective agitation of the Ogoni and Niger Delta region.

In empirical terms, the donation of $5.5million dollars to ordinary Ogoni people through the Kiisi Trust, which would be used for education and small scale survival projects, would go a long way to ameliorate the years of suffering of many homes. Recalling the role he played fighting for justice for his father, and the link between it and the collective case, Mr. Ken Wiwa says: “In the face of the provocations and psychological trauma of all this, I have tried to maintain a dignified position, worked assiduously to deny myself the right to grieve in order to find a lasting solution to the challenges of the Ogoni and the Niger Delta in Nigeria.” 

Contrary to the insinuations that he is indifferent to the core of his father’s dream for the Ogoni people, Mr. Wiwa (Jnr.) does not believe that the settlement takes away the fact that $hell has always been a key actor in the predicament that plagues Ogoniland. “The day after my father was hanged, I was asked my opinion of $hell and I didn't hesitate to answer that $hell was part of the problem and must be part of the solution.”

But while Mr. Wiwa is seeking the same thing that his father died for, his approach is sharply different, “I haven't changed my opinion. I am not interested in retributive justice but a justice that is creative, a justice that enables all stakeholders in this affair to account for and learn lessons from the past so that we can all move forward within a constructive and sustainable framework. We have to remain committed to building the kind of world that ensures that people who live on natural resource-bearing areas are not treated as collateral damage in a senseless race for profit. With all of its experience in Nigeria, $hell knows that such creative justice is possible and the time for us to move in that direction is at hand.”

When one encounters or gives considerable insight to the expression of the son of late Ken Saro-Wiwa, it is a clear as he told a journalist of one of Nigerian leading paper recently, that his father died for the Ogoni people, so he has decided to live for them. But some Ogoni and Niger Delta activists seems to be more interested in over trumpeting what they see as gaps between private lawsuit and the collective claims.

Background and Reflection:
Ogoni is the name of one of the ethnic groups in the Niger Delta of southern Nigeria; the Ogonis occupy a total of 404 square miles. For the Ogoni and the people of Nigeria, oil and oil companies have brought poverty, environmental devastation and severe human rights abuses. Currently, almost 85 percent of oil revenues accrue to 1% of the population while, according to the African Development Bank, more than 70 percent of Nigerians live on less than US$1 per day. 

When taking stock of the resources which sustain the fabrics of Nigeria, the Ogoni stand out. It is home to two out of the four refineries in Nigeria, a petro-chemical plant, the biggest fertilizer plant in the country, six out of the 606 oil fields in Nigeria. The six oil fields in Ogoni belch its “black gold” from over 100 functional oil wells, contributing a total of 30, 000 barrels per day, and it is important to note that when $hell started operation in the land, it use to produce 300, 000 barrels per day.

It has also been revealed that the Ogoni earth is pregnant with an estimated 10 billion cubic ton of natural gas. Despite this array of resources in Ogoniland, the local people are largely unemployed in the over 60 oil servicing and allied firms that operates in the area, social amenities is generally lacking and pre-history where it exist at all, modern life and opportunities is a luxury and poverty is egregious.

The same plight that plagues the Ogonis is the fate of other oil producing groups in Niger Delta; however, the Ogonis took the first step to confront their tormentors. Ogonis took up the struggle ignoring their extreme disadvantaged condition to fight non-violently against $hell’s violation of their indigenous and ecological rights. On the same string they decried the oppressive policies and laws by the Nigerian state, which institutionalized their slavery.

The Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) was formed in 1990 with nine affiliate bodies to educate and mobilize its local communities. The Movement took account of the minority status of the Ogonis and the well organized forces of oppressions against them. Thus, it trained a large contingent of activists who became committed to using non-violence to stop the repression and exploitation of the Ogoni and their resources by $hell and the Nigerian government. Contrary to expectation, MOSOP quickly garnered wide support and in 1993, an estimated 300, 000 of the total Ogoni population publicly supported the group. Ken Saro-Wiwa, founding member and president of MOSOP brought worldwide attention to the human rights violations committed against the Ogoni through international campaigning and his poignant writing. He was nominated for a Nobel Prize and awarded the Right Livelihood Award and the Goldman Prize for his environmental and human rights activism.

The struggle of the Ogoni ethnic nationality bears an important stroke in the political horizon of the continent. It is so because, 1994 which marked the end of colonialism of Africans (the fall of apartheid), was the ushering in of the Ken Saro-Wiwa led struggle.  The entire continent was either occupied with the independence of South Africa or the incarceration of the Ogonis leaders. Ogoni struggle was the opening of another chapter – the chapter of environmental rights protection, ethnic minority rights crusade and the fight against institutionalized Anglo-America imperialism of the global north.

The Ogoni struggle called the attention of the continent to the fact that it was not yet Uhuru as long trans-national corporations like Mobile, $hell, Elf and their likes held down Africans. It was a political epiphany of the end of nationalism that equals the beginning of the struggle for the empowerment of the indigenous peoples. Saro-Wiwa and his Ogoni comrades championed the call for Africans to reclaim and take control of their natural resources from the imperialists, and advocated for the need for African resources to be placed in the hands of the African masses, and such a political stride is not insignificant in the liberation of the continent.

And it was for this important cause that Saro-Wiwa and his colleagues were hanged at the gallows in the oil city – Port Harcourt, but fourteen years after their brutal killing, $hell was brought to justice just as Saro-Wiwa predicted.

Royal Dutch $hell, plc ($hell) began oil production in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria in 1958 and has a long history of working closely with the Nigerian government to quell popular opposition to its presence in the region. At the request of $hell, and with $hell’s assistance and financing, Nigerian soldiers used deadly force and massive, brutal raids against the Ogoni people throughout the early 1990s to repress a growing movement against the oil company.

After 33 years daily operation that milked the Ogoniland of approximately 900 million barrels of crude oil, Saro-Wiwa educated and mobilized Ogoni people to non-violently raise awareness over the appalling drilling activities of $hell. The Ogoni people became the first ethnic group in the Niger Delta to successfully resist a multinational oil operator. $hell collaborated with the Nigerian military government to squash the mass resistance movement by the Ogoni people, and as part of their grand ploy, Saro-Wiwa, a celebrated writer, who led the movement was falsely accused of killing four Ogoni chiefs – namely, Chief Edward Kobani, Chief Albert Badey, Chief Theophilous Orage and Chief Samuel Orage.

Military Occupation and Persecution:
In 1994, Ken Saro-Wiwa and other Ogoni leaders were prevented by the military from attending a gathering; at that very gathering, four Ogoni chiefs were killed. The military governor promptly announced without any police investigation that Saro-Wiwa caused the deaths. Consequently, he and other leaders were taken into a military prison, held in leg and hand cuff, guarded by stern military personnel with routine torture. Despite the lack of any connection between MOSOP and the murder, the military used it as a pretext to conduct raids on 60 towns in Ogoni and to detain and beat several hundred men, women and youths suspected of involvement with MOSOP.

The killing of the four prominent chiefs took place at Giokoo, one of Ogoni villages on the 21st of May 1994. The chiefs, all friends and in-laws of Saro-Wiwa favoured an inclusivity line of agitation, which would make the plights of the Ogonis a tool to advance the political and economic interest of the elites; they largely opposed the masses political consciousness. The Nigerian state and $hell explored the difference in opinion, siding with the chiefs and other elites of the land to run high profile media propaganda to counter the popular front.

Having elevated a counter group that consisted of a handful of local politicians, the government invited the four prominent chiefs to a meeting with full security operatives on guard, and it was at that meeting that they were killed. On the day that the four chiefs were killed, Saro-Wiwa and his comrades that were supposed to be attending a rally were barred and send away from Ogoniland, an order which he obeyed and was accompanied to his house in Port Harcourt, a distance of about 53 kilometers. 

The government did announce with haste that Saro-Wiwa and MOSOP were responsible for the killing; it thereafter set up the Ibrahim Auta Military Tribunal. With Saro-Wiwa and his colleagues in detention, the government of General Sani Abacha went ahead to station several military troops to torture, rape, maim and generally terrorize the Ogoni masses. This was done with the intent to break the back of the mass resistant movement of the Ogoni people, the movement and activists were driven underground which led to the exiling of thousands of Ogonis.

International Campaign:
Hundreds of Ogoni activists fled to the United States of America, Canada, the United Kingdom and even South Africa. Amongst those that fled to the Americas, was Dr. Owen Mon Wiwa, younger brother of Ken Saro-Wiwa. He and Mr. Ken Wiwa (Jnr), the son of his hanged elder brother approached the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), EarthRights International (ERI) and other human rights attorneys to sue $hell for human rights violations and involvement in the process that led to the killing of Saro-Wiwa.
In responding to questions filled via the internet, Maria LaHood, of the Centre for Constitutional Rights says: “The case was originally brought in 1996 by Ken Wiwa, Owens Wiwa, and Blessing Kpuinen against the parent companies of $hell, Royal Dutch Petroleum Company and $hell Transport and Trading Company.  In later years, other individuals joined the lawsuit: Karalolo Kogbara, Michael Tema Vizor, Lucky Doobee, Friday Nuate, Monday Gbokoo, David Kiobel, and James B. N-Nah.  In 2004, these ten plaintiffs also brought a suit against the Nigerian subsidiary of $hell, $hell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (SPDC); they also sued Brian Anderson, the former head of SPDC, when he was in New York in 2001.  Plaintiffs and their loved ones were human rights defenders who were detained, tortured and killed because of their vocal opposition to $hell’s devastation of Ogoni, and two others who were shot in their villages by the military (brought in by $hell) to suppress that opposition.  Plaintiffs brought these cases for their own injuries, and the harm done to their loved ones, with $hell’s complicity.”
$hell invoked their trans-border might to try to thwart the case so that it could hide away from the glaring involvement in the hanging of Saro-Wiwa and his colleagues, it delayed the judicial process for 14 years. And finally, the case was supposed to go into trial on May 26, 2009 in New York City, and the company which had trumpeted that it hand no hands in the gross violation of the Ogoni people and the killing of Saro-Wiwa dramatically preferred the out-of-court-settlement instead of stating its innocence in court.

The Roles of $hell:
In early 1993, $hell requested military support to build a pipeline through Ogoni. When Karalolo Kogbara, a widow and mother of five children protested over the bulldozing of her crops, she was shot by Nigerian troops and lost an arm as a result. In a separate incident later that year, Uebari N-nah was shot and killed by soldiers near a $hell flow station; the soldiers were requested and later compensated by $hell.

Dr. Owens Monday Wiwa, younger brother of Ken Saro-Wiwa, a trained medical doctor who led a humble life before the struggle started. The medical director of Ina Dum, one of the few private clinics in the whole Ogoniland, joined the struggle on establishing the connection between recurrent sicknesses and diseases that the Ogoni people suffered and the operations of $hell that did not take safety into account.

Owen Wiwa was detained repeatedly under false charges in 1994 to prevent him from protesting the incarceration of his elder brother and the injustices in Ogoniland; he was beaten and threatened throughout his detentions. Dr. Wiwa met Brain Anderson, the Nigerian born British, and then Managing Director of $hell, who offered that the company was willing to get Owen’s elder brother off the hook of death, but on the condition that Ken Saro-Wiwa would stop campaign against $hell. If the trial had been allowed to go ahead, the plaintiffs were going to tender implicating documents, which shows that $hell ordered and paid for weapons requested by the Nigerian state for the destruction of the Ogoni people.

$hell continued its close relationship with the Nigerian military regime during the early 1990s. The oil company requested an increase in security and provided monetary and logistical support to the Nigerian police. $hell frequently called upon the Nigerian police for “security operations” that often amounted to raids and terror campaigns against the Ogoni. In response to growing Ogoni opposition, $hell and the Nigerian government coordinated a public relations campaign to discredit the movement, falsely attributing airplane hijackings, kidnapping and other acts of violence to Ken Saro-Wiwa and MOSOP.

$hell was involved in the development of the strategy that resulted in the unlawful execution of the Ogoni Nine. $hell told the Nigerian regime they needed to deal with Saro-Wiwa and MOSOP. $hell monitored him and closely followed the tribunal and his detention. Prior to the trial, $hell Nigeria told its parent companies that Saro-Wiwa would be convicted; the company even informed witnesses that Saro-Wiwa was never going free. $hell held meetings with the Nigerian regime to discuss the tribunal, including with the military president Sani Abacha himself. $hell’s lawyer attended the trial, which, in Nigeria, is a privilege afforded only to interested parties.

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 $hell in order to give false testimony – in the presence of $hell’s lawyer. One month after the executions of the Ogoni Nine, $hell signed an agreement to invest $4 billion in a liquefied natural gas project in Nigeria.