Ken Saro-Wiwa

Kenule Beeson "Ken" Saro-Wiwa (10 October 1941 – 10 November 1995) was a Nigerian writer, television producer, and environmental activist.

Kenule Saro-Wiwa was born in Bori, near Port-Harcourt, Nigeria on 10 October 1941.

He was the son of Chief Jim Wiwa, a forest ranger who held a title in the Nigerian chieftaincy system, and his third wife Widu.

He officially changed his name to Saro-Wiwa after the Nigerian Civil War.

He was married to Maria Saro Wiwa.

His father's hometown was the village of Bane, Ogoniland, whose residents speak the Khana dialect of the Ogoni language.

He spent his childhood in an Anglican home and eventually proved himself to be an excellent student.

He received primary education at a Native Authority school in Bori, then attended secondary school at Government College Umuahia.

A distinguished student, he was captain of the table tennis team and amassed school prizes in History and English.

On the completion of his secondary education, he obtained a scholarship to study English at the University of Ibadan.

Saro-Wiwa was a member of the Ogoni people, an ethnic minority in Nigeria whose homeland, Ogoniland, in the Niger Delta, has been targeted for crude oil extraction since the 1950s and has suffered extreme environmental damage from decades of indiscriminate petroleum waste dumping.

Initially as a spokesperson, and then as the president, of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), Saro-Wiwa led a nonviolent campaign against environmental degradation of the land and waters of Ogoniland by the operations of the multinational petroleum industry, especially the Royal Dutch Shell company.

He criticized the Nigerian government for its reluctance to enforce environmental regulations on the foreign petroleum companies operating in the area.

At Ibadan, he plunged into academic and cultural interests, he won departmental prizes in 1963 and 1965 and worked for a drama troupe.

The travelling drama troupe performed in Kano, Benin, Ilorin and Lagos and collaborated with the Nottingham Playhouse theater group.

He briefly became a teaching assistant at the University of Lagos and later at University of Nigeria, Nsukka.

He was an African literature lecturer in Nsukka when the civil war broke out, he supported the Federal Government and had to leave the region for his hometown at Bori.

On his journey to Port-Harcourt, he witnessed the multitudes of refugees returning to the East, a scene he described as a "sorry sight to see".

Three days after his arrival to Bonny, it fell to federal troops.

He and his family then stayed in Bonny, he travelled back to Lagos and took a position at the University of Lagos which did not last long as he was called back to Bonny.

He was called back to become the Civilian Administrator for the port city of Bonny in the Niger Delta.

During the Nigerian Civil War he positioned himself as an Ogoni leader dedicated to the Federal cause.

He followed his job as an administrator with an appointment as a commissioner in the old Rivers State.

In the early 1970s, he served as the Regional Commissioner for Education in the Rivers State Cabinet.

In the late 1970s, he established a number of successful business ventures in retail and real estate, and during the 1980s concentrated primarily on his writing, journalism and television production.

But was dismissed in 1973 because of his support for Ogoni autonomy.

In 1977, he became involved in the political arena running as the candidate to represent Ogoni in the Constituent Assembly.

He lost the election in a narrow margin.

It was during this time he had a fall out with his friend Edwards Kobani.

His best known novel, Sozaboy: A Novel in Rotten English (1985), tells the story of a naive village boy recruited to the army during the Nigerian Civil War of 1967 to 1970, and intimates the political corruption and patronage in Nigeria's military regime of the time.

His intellectual work was interrupted in 1987 when he re-entered the political scene, having been appointed by the newly installed dictator Ibrahim Babangida to aid the country's transition to democracy.

But he resigned because he felt Babangida's supposed plans for a return to democracy were disingenuous.

His sentiments were proven correct in the coming years, as Babangida failed to relinquish power.

His war diaries, On a Darkling Plain (1989), document his experience during the war.

He was also a successful businessman and television producer.

His satirical television series, Basi & Company, was wildly popular, with an estimated audience of 30 million.

In 1993, Babangida annulled Nigeria's general elections that would have transferred power to a civilian government, sparking mass civil unrest and eventually forcing him to step down, at least officially, that same year.

Saro-Wiwa's works include TV, drama and prose writing.

At the peak of his non-violent campaign, he was tried by a special military tribunal for allegedly masterminding the murder of Ogoni chiefs at a pro-government meeting, and hanged in 1995 by the military dictatorship of General Sani Abacha.

His execution provoked international outrage and resulted in Nigeria's suspension from the Commonwealth of Nations for over three years.