The Ogoni people of Nigeria are on the move again. In the words of Saro-Wiwa, ‘It was not just about change for the sake of change, but about self-reliance and recreating Ogoni society.’ He drove the creation of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), the umbrella organisation that acted as the vehicle for the Ogoni struggle and included women’s groups, students, tribal elders and youth groups. The organisation is still recognised as the voice of the Ogoni people. Saro-Wiwa was the ideologue of this movement and it was he who developed the philosophical foundations of the Ogoni struggle, preaching nonviolence and developing the Ogoni bill of rights. The bill of rights remains the bible of the Ogoni struggle, setting out demands for social, political and environmental justice, including sovereignty over resources in their territory. Saro-Wiwa’s ability to mobilise the Ogoni people to demand a say in what happened to the natural resources contained in their territory set a dangerous precedent for powerful economic interests, not only Shell. Such resistance represented a risk to their future access to the natural riches of the Niger Delta. The response of the Nigerian military government was a violent onslaught in which 27 villages were destroyed, around 2,000 people killed and 80,000 displaced. This was followed by Saro-Wiwa’s execution along with eight others in 1995. redpepper.org.uk/oil-uprising-two-decades-after-ken-saro-wiwas-death-the-ogoni-struggle-is-reigniting/
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 13:59:25 +0000
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