Showing posts with label Foulon Nichols Award for Creative Writing and Human Rights Crusade. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Foulon Nichols Award for Creative Writing and Human Rights Crusade. Show all posts

Monday, November 8, 2021

Ken Saro-Wiwa And The Ogoni Conundrum

 By Dan Amor

This week (Wednesday November 10, 2021, to be specific) indubitably marks the 26th anniversary of the tragic death of Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa and eight of his Ogoni kinsmen, in the evil hands of professional hangmen who sneaked into Port Harcourt from Sokoto in the cover of darkness. We were at the national convention of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) in the auditorium of the University of Lagos when the news came to us with a rude shock that our immediate past President then had been killed by the State under the watchful eyes of Gen. Sani Abacha who was head of State and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. 

*Ken Saro-Wiwa 

By his death, the Abacha-led military junta had demonstrated, in shocking finality, to the larger world, that it was guided by the most base, most callous of instincts. As a student of Nigerian history, and of the literature of the Nigerian Civil War, I am adequately aware that Ken Saro-Wiwa, against the backdrop of our multicultural complexities allegedly worked against his own region during the War, the consequences of which he would have regretted even in his grave.