Ken Saro-Wiwa

Saro-Wiwa was born at Bori in Ogoniland, studied at Government College Umuahia and the University of Ibadan, and served as an administrator on the federal side during the civil war. He later worked as a businessman, publisher and writer, producing the novel Sozaboy, written in a form of pidgin, the story collection A Forest of Flowers and the television comedy series Basi and Company.

From the late 1980s he devoted himself to the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, which set out the Ogoni Bill of Rights: a claim to political autonomy, a share of oil revenue and an end to the flaring and spillage that had damaged farmland and creeks. The campaign drew large peaceful demonstrations and international attention. He was arrested in 1994 in connection with the killing of four Ogoni chiefs, tried before a specially constituted tribunal whose procedure was widely criticised by legal observers, and hanged in Port Harcourt in November 1995 with eight others. Nigeria was suspended from the Commonwealth in response.

Saro-Wiwa's campaign put the environmental cost of oil extraction in the Niger Delta on the international agenda, and his trial and execution remain among the most criticised acts of Nigeria's military era. Later inquiries and litigation concerning the Ogoni case have continued for decades.