|
Whatever the explanations, however, in
Port Harcourt Prison, where the condemned men were held, the prison authorities
discovered that there was no willing hangman within reach, and thus Saro-Wiwa
and his companions survived a few days longer on death row. It was a brief
reprieve, and an ominous one. An executioner was dispatched from the North
to Port Harcourt, but the levers of death had lain unused for far too long
and repeatedly thwarted the hangman, prolonging the agony of the condemned
men in a scene of shabby cruelty, an unspeakably inhuman drama. Ken Saro-Wiwa
was first among the nine, and it took five attempts to hang him. On November
10, as he was led away from the scaffold the third or fourth time, Ken
Saro-Wiwa cried out, "Why are you people doing this to me? What sort of
nation is this?" -- Wole Soyinka
When Ogoni spokesman, Ken Saro-Wiwa, and 8 other Ogoni activists were lynched by the military government on November 1995, a wave of international protests washed its way into the world's press, condemning Nigeria's actions. For many human rights activists, environmentalists and Pan-Africanists the tragedy of the state killing of the 9 Ogoni marked the sand end of an ugly case. Not so. At the same prison where Saro-Wiwa and the other 8 Ogoni men were murdered by the state, 19 other Ogoni men await an undeclared date with death by the military government, on the same trumped-up charges as Saro-Wiwa. Earlier this year, the 19 were visited by high-ranking envoys from the Organization of African Unity (OAU), but the Ogoni 19 critiqued the visit as political windowdressing, and in a joint, public letter, wrote: We are disappointed in You-Why now after we have been judicially and extra-judicially killed, maimed and driven into exile? Those of us here are even the luckier ones to be alive. Most of us here are married and the only breadwinners of our individual families. We have all lost our jobs, most of us have lost one child or the other, or parents, some of our wives have run away as a result of our protracted incarceration. We know of no offense we have committed other than we are from Ogoniland. The government of Nigeria has been so unconscientious and insincere to themselves and humanity over the allegation of murder against us. An incident was said to have happened on May 21, 1994, in which four of our own leaders were said to have been murdered. In less than 24 hours from the time of the indecent, the then Military Governor of this state had a press conference in which he accused members of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) as the perpetrators of this heinous crime. What informed the opinion of this Governor in making such a sensitive and sentimental statement in such a serious matter should also be a matter of concern to you all… The Ogoni 19 asked the envoys to visit Ogoniland and to see things for themselves (we don't know if they did so). They wrote of their wretched conditions at PH Prison: We are all suffering from one sickness or the other without any medical care. In August 1995, we lost one of us, the late Mr. Clement Tusima. On February 21, 1997, one of us here, Mr. Baritule Lebe, was bitten by a black snake right in his prison cell. Look at our meal here, just about 40 seeds of unwashed and parboiled beans without stew. Our health is on the precipice. Please free us now or else we will be killed…---the Ogoni 19.It is painful for this writer to write anything critical of a nation like Nigeria, seen by many as the bright hope of Africa, with her sheer size, wealth and historical magnificence; yet, it is harder still to ignore the tortured, innocent cries of Ogoni's young political prisoners! Hope you won't ignore them either. If you want more info, write/call: Committee in Support of the People of Nigeria (CISPON) P O BOX 99076 Emeryville, CA 94662 (510) 601-0182 Free the Ogoni 19! © 1997 Mumia Abu-Jamal
|
Nightmare of the Ogoni in Nigeria