Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Ogoni, and the Problem of Conflicting Loyalties, 1970–2000

While much of the literature on Ken Saro-Wiwa’s political career rightly focuses on his environmental activism, his struggles for the leadership within his native Ogoni people has been largely overlooked. However, this conflict ultimately sealed his fate and secured his execution when four of his rivals were brutally murdered. Saro-Wiwa was convicted of incitement, even though he was several hundred kilometers away at the time of the murders. In fact, Saro-Wiwa’s protracted conflict with the traditional Ogoni chiefs was rooted in a struggle for access to political power and economic benefits and social rewards that came with it. This paper charts Saro-Wiwa’s battle with Ogoni chiefs, specifically the four murdered ones. When these opponents thwarted Saro-Wiwa’s political ambitions during the country’s first transition to civilian rule in 1979, he sought to create a new mass mobilization movement that would compete with them for Ogoni loyalty and the representation that came with it. It was Saro-Wiwa’s successful creation of a rival power structure that challenged the so-called “traditional” chiefs and ultimately set them on a collision course that ended with the murder of the four and Saro-Wiwa’s execution along with eight of his staunchest supporters. More importantly, this paper examines the intersection between place and power within the Ogoni, as a society that has inhabited their land for over a millennium but is now subsumed into a Nigerian State eager to exploit the oil in Ogoniland. In particular, the conflict between Saro-Wiwa and the murdered chiefs was part and parcel of the struggle to access the rewards that fealty to the Nigerian state would bestow.