Ken Saro-Wiwa Research Articles

A Linguistic Study of Helon Habila’s Novel, Oil on Water

Petroleum, Nigeria’s major source of revenue is obtained in the Niger Delta. Yet, the region has been besieged by a lot of crises right from the colonial era. The process of crude oil extraction, resulting in oil pollution has done serious damages to the region, thereby hindering farming and fishing, the main occupations of the Deltans. This plunged the people into the unemployment that is responsible for poverty, hardship, diseases and deaths among the people. Deltans suffer so many losses, yet they are not adequately compensated. This is the cause of the Niger Delta crises. During the colonial era, the British government established oil companies to explore petroleum to enrich her home country, Britain, at the expense of the Niger Delta. Many years after independence, the condition of the region has remained deplorable due to corruption in Nigeria. Being exploited and cheated, the people resorted to different forms of protests, violence and militancy, that have culminated in social unrest in the region. Despite all efforts by the government to arrest the situation, the Niger delta issue has remained a serious problem of public concern, which needs permanent solution. To this effect, many Nigerian literary artists such as Ken Saro-wiwa, Tanure Ojaide, Kaine Agary and Helon Habila expressed their concern over the crises in their literary works, aimed at proffering permanent solution to the problem. This reiterates the importance of literature and the literary artists to the society. This paper examines and expounds how Helon Habila deploys language resources in his novel, Oil on Water, to convey the Niger Delta crises, their security risks to the society and the Nigerian economy, as well as the decisive steps to arrest the ugly situation.

Ogoni: Ethnography, Ethnogenesis, and the Issues of Communicating in a Neo-MOSOP Milieu, Nigeria

The issues around Ogoni are many. The recommendations in the UNEP Ogoni Report, which assessed Ogoni environment as depleted and depleting, have been lying idle on the pages of the report since 2011. Moves by both national and state government actors, as well as by corporate interests, to resume oil production in Ogoni have been heightening. In the midst of these, other voices, some of them new, have been challenging the privilege of the Late Ken Saro-Wiwa's Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) as the leading voice of the Ogoni. This paper submits that these issues are the very kind of issues which Communication handles well. Tracing significant aspects of Ogoni ethnography and ethnogenesis, the paper shows how the tool of Communication can use Ogoni idioms, Ogoni semiology, and Ogoni folklore to not only do an effective job with those recommendations of the UNEP Report which have to do with health, environmental, and other kinds of awareness campaigns to the communities, but also to do an effective job with connecting the many voices in Ogoni with each other. The paper concludes that how Ogonis and all stakeholders handle the tool of Communication will determine to a great length what will become of the contentions between the representative organisations in Ogoni, what will become of the implementation of the UNEP Report, and what will become of the moves by government and corporate actors to resume oil production in Ogoni.

Exploitative Use of Lexical Items in the Expression of Group Ideologies by the Late Ogoni Liberation Activist Ken Saro- Wiwa

This paper is an attempt to analyze one of Ken Saro-Wiwa’s speeches made in his bid to effect justice and equity from the Federal Government of Nigeria to his oppressed people, the Ogonis of the Niger Delta region in Nigeria. The paper highlights the use of appropriate lexical items by the speaker to achieve specific aims. For instance, the lexical choice made by the speaker for the expression of group ideologies and for the expression of the ideological orientations of the Niger Delta struggle, such as resource control, self determination and environmental pollution. The main argument of this research is that language is a useful tool that can be employed in the conception, conduct and control of social conflict and that language is a significant instrument in socio- political discourse. Keywords: Ideology, in-group, rut-group, Resource control, self- determination. DOI : 10.7176/JLLL/60-04 Publication date :September 30 th 2019

“How can a river be red?” Violent petroculture in Chigozie Obioma’s The Fishermen

ABSTRACTChigozie Obioma’s 2015 novel The Fishermen does not directly address oil extraction in the Niger River Delta, or the activism of Ken Saro-Wiwa who would have been executed during the time-present of the text. However, its “spectral spaces”, especially the polluted Omi-Ala River, are sites where past and future environments coexist. This article offers a petrocultural reading of The Fishermen that draws upon Foucault’s concept of “heterochronies” as well as Harry Garuba’s work on animist materialism to expand the ecology of the novel to include geologic time as well as the not-yet-living and no-longer-living. This expansive conception of the novel’s environment makes visible the ways people are directly implicated in their own decomposition and reclamation by the land. Such a reading enables us to see the material, spiritual and psychic implications of colonialist Christianity and imperialist resource extraction as intimately linked and damaging to a singular but unequal ecology.

Palm Oil and Crude Oil: Environmental Damage, Resource Conflict, and Literary Strategies in the Niger Delta

Foreign petroleum exploitation has long been a focus of writing from the Niger Delta, notably the work of Tanure Ojaide, Ken Saro-Wiwa, and authors following in their wake. In Nigeria, petroleum is an economic mainstay and “has saturated virtually every aspect of economy, polity and sociability” (Watts, “Crude Politics” 12). However, mineral oil is not the only contested natural resource that Nigerian authors examine. Existing ecocritical scholarship on literature from the Niger Delta by scholars such as Nixon (Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor) and Caminero-Santangelo (African Fiction and Joseph Conrad) has focused on authors who engage with petroleum. While their analyses of the environmental, economic, and social problems that this causes are important, it is disappointing that Wenzel and Lincoln are among the few environmentally-engaged literary critics to examine literature about the area’s long history of resource exploitation before the discovery of petroleum. As historians have often argued, the palm oil trade had caused environmental and social problems in the Niger Delta during colonial and protectorate times; commodities such as ivory and rubber were also exploited.1 Although the environmental impact of palm oil cultivation and processing was nowhere near as severe as the destruction created by petroleum, it created conflicts over resources that are remembered in the work of several Nigerian writers. Equally significant is the way that certain authors strategically omit the conflicts and environmental problems created by the palm oil trade: this article contends that this is a strategy to throw into relief the problems brought by petroleum.

The Poetics of Entanglement in Zina Saro-Wiwa’s Food Interventions

Through an analysis of Zina Saro-Wiwa’s food interventions, this essay re-visits the idea of entanglement (Hofmeyr 2004; Kiewiet 1957; Mbembe 2001; Wenzel 2009; Nuttall 2009). This concept, I argue, is embedded in Saro-Wiwa’s work, reflecting neo-colonial circuits of trade, resource extraction and labour exploitation. Its poetic and political potency engages with food and people and their intricate relations to land, particularly in the Niger Delta. Zina Saro-Wiwa’s art resonates with the poetry of her father, the writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa. Her work points to her father’s significant role in the continued struggles of the Ogoni against the historical devastation caused by oil industries. Drawing from discourses about food and capitalist predation in the African continent, I argue that entanglement in Zina Saro-Wiwa’s work presents a paradox between an intended emancipatory aesthetic and neo-colonial entrapments in the art-oil economy. Food, in this work, is symbolic of interlaced systems of production, reproduction and artistic creation, which are offered by the artist as possibilities of redeeming sometimes inconsonant new ‘senses of being’.

Black November (2012) and its social-change potential: reactions from the audience

This article examines, through multiple film screenings and Focus Group Discussions, the potential of Black November (2012) to initiate social change in the 20th anniversary of Ken Saro-Wiwa’s death. Current research on African film is skewed towards broad representations of urban and rural lives, thus making the reception of indigenous popular films an understudied area. Virtually absent in African film scholarship is the reception of the films as agents of potential social change. The nexus between popular films and social change is examined here in the aftermath of failed formalized processes of conflict resolution. Recent popular film reception studies have transnational foci, which focus on African emigrants’ conditions of life in foreign localities. The paper, therefore, evaluates the impact of popular films on viewers and how they interpret the film as being instrumental in changing oppressive situations in the Niger Delta. It deploys the theory that the arts function as peace-builders and tools for social change among conflicting parties in the light of the Niger Delta struggles, particularly those championed by Ken Saro-Wiwa, which are revisited two decades after his internationally condemned murder. Findings include that Black November cannot function in isolation to produce social change but must work within a broad framework of strategies serving the same goal.

Saro-Wiwa's Language of Dissent: Translating between African Englishes

This article calls attention to the essential translational aspect of linguistic experimentation in literary uses of African Englishes in colonial and postcolonial West African literature. It focuses mainly on the literature of the most linguistically diverse country in Africa – Nigeria. Drawing on the theoretical work of Itamar Even-Zohar, Lawrence Venuti, and Pierre Bourdieu, it demonstrates how the different Englishes used in this literature act in a translational way, relating and responding to cultural, political, and social contexts. Specific attention is paid to Amos Tutuola's use of interlanguage and diglossia; Chinua Achebe's manipulation of acts of code-switching and mixing; and how Ken Saro-Wiwa's development of a unique language of dissent in his novel Sozaboy: A Novel in Rotten English is built upon these earlier experimentations with translations between Englishes.

A serious television trickster: Ken Saro-Wiwa’s political and artistic legacy in Basi and Company

Ken Saro-Wiwa has attracted both popular and scholarly recognition as a significant Nigerian writer and activist. Despite this interest, the television programme Basi and Company that he wrote and directed from 1985 to 1990 has received scant attention, often being dismissed as a frivolous side project unworthy of inclusion in Saro-Wiwa’s oeuvre. This article challenges such neglect, arguing that the show is an essential part of the work of one of the 20th century’s most important public intellectuals. Basi and Company represents a complex re-imagining of the traditional West African trickster figures, such as Kuru the tortoise and the Yoruba mythological deity of Eshu, as a means of engaging with contemporary life under a brutal regime in the post-oil boom period in Nigeria. Its 150 episodes, watched routinely by over 30 million Nigerians, subtly critiqued modern Nigeria and its government, and it deserves a place alongside Saro-Wiwa’s other politically engaged works.

A deformação do sujeito no romance Sozaboy, de Ken Saro-Wiwa

O presente artigo propõe-se a defender o argumento de que, ao contrário do que a breve história de sua recepção nos diz, não há “formação” alguma em jogo no romance Sozaboy, do escritor e ativista político e ambiental nigeriano Ken Saro-Wiwa, ao menos não segundo os termos da Bildung ou do Bildungsroman. Para apresentar o argumento em questão, o texto divide-se em dois momentos fundamentais: primeiramente, realiza uma rápida introdução ao significado histórico dos conceitos que aqui nos cabem, “formação” (Bildung) e “romance de formação” (Bildungsroman); a seguir, tomando como pano de fundo a exposição realizada, o artigo analisa o romance Sozaboy, assinalando que, menos que um “romance de formação”, Saro-Wiwa descreve um processo deformativo singular, que, como tal, pede do leitor uma outra epistemologia, uma epistemologia negativa da destruição do sujeito.

Burial rites for Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni Nine: implications for modern society

This study examined the burial rites given to the ‘Ogoni Nine’ activists from the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. The study adopted the anthropological, philosophical and sociological approaches. Findings from the study revealed that the ‘Ogoni Nine’ include Ken Saro-Wiwa, Saturday Dobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel Gbooko, Paul Levera, Felix Nuate, Baribor Bera, Barinem Kobel and John Kpuine who were executed by hanging by the military government of General Sani Abacha in 1995. These were Ogoni heroes who fought and died for the Ogoni struggle for survival in Nigeria. The Ogoni were not happy with both the multi-national oil company (Shell – SPDC) and the Federal Government of Nigeria of the careless, tormenting and humiliating ways the corpses of these heroes were handled at death and buried at the Port Harcourt cemetery outside Ogoni land. In Ogoni tradition, the type of burial given to these activists was meant for those who died a bad death and not for heroes such as the Ogoni nine who died in the struggle for survival of their people. Important aspects of the rites accorded, good death at burial were denied them. Traditional burial was organised for these Ogoni heroes by their people to retrieve, transform and purify their bodies and souls from the abode of evil forces. In the Ogoni traditional religion, it is a taboo and a thing that attracts bad omen to society of the living if the heads of their heroes are buried outside or left at the war front away from home. This belief and practices amongst others informed the Ogonis’ demand for a monument that will stand in memories of them to be constructed in Ogoni land.

Restor(y)ing community identity through the archive of Ken Saro-Wiwa

This study draws on recent research into the social function of archives and their web-based delivery to explore how a community-based archive project in Nigeria might provide a site of collective trauma healing and contribute to existing community-based development programs. The Ken Saro-Wiwa Digital Archive project aims to catalogue and make available the digitized personal papers of executed Niger Delta activist-author Ken Saro-Wiwa, who spoke out internationally against government mistreatment of his native community. The digital archive project seeks to provide an online community space as well as an internationally accessible exhibition of the archive. After an exploration of the relevant challenges facing community identity, it is argued that the interactive, online and community-based nature of the Ken Saro-Wiwa Digital Archive presents a unique opportunity for a disadvantaged ethnic minority group to take back ownership of their own story in the present, as well as shape their future, via a deliberate ‘restor(y)ing’ of their past. The archive of a prominent executed community activist, which documents the injustice and trauma experienced by that community, might in this way become a source of positive identity formation and empowerment by documenting the assertion of community autonomy and identity in the face of opposition.

A Utopian Commentary on the Plight of Nigeria: Ken Saro-Wiwa’s “Africa Kills Her Sun”

Abstract:This article investigates the presence of utopian elements in Ken Saro-Wiwa’s short story “Africa Kills Her Sun,” and the extent to which they dismantle an otherwise bleak commentary on the protagonist’s reality. Ernst Bloch’s notions of “pre-illumination,” “daydreaming,” and “not-yet” are employed as analytical tools in order to unravel the narrative’s utopian content.

Re-Writing the Nation: Literary Rehistoricisation and Counter-Hegemonic Discourse in Ken Wiwa's In the Shadow of a Saint and Jacob Dlamini's Native Nostalgia

ABSTRACTIn this article, I analyse two recent African autobiographical works for the ways in which they provide counter-hegemonic national discourses in regard to Nigeria and South Africa. The texts are In the Shadow of a Saint (2001), Ken Wiwa's memoir and biographical homage to his father, the martyred Nigerian writer and activist, Ken Saro-Wiwa, and Native Nostalgia (2009) by the South African historian, Jacob Dlamini. The article highlights the different ways in which each author challenges official discourses of post-conflict national reconciliation through the re-imagining of national histories, the narrative reconstruction of social/cultural identity and the depiction of space. Furthermore, it highlights how the subgenre of postcolonial life-writing is deployed for purposes of literary (re)historicisation and socio-political critique while drawing attention to important divergences, convergences and connections between post-2000 writing from two of Africa's eminent literary sites—Nigeria and South Africa.

A Peckham Pilgrimage: Looking for Lagos & Considering ‘Community’

This piece was prompted by the requirement that I write a “Critical Travelogue” for one of my MA classes. The assignment required every member of the class to physically make a journey before critically re-imagining it in a short essay. Beyond this, there were very few restrictions on the direction and form the piece could take. Combining my interests in art, activism, memory and Nigerian history as only a project like this would allow, I travelled to an exhibition commemorating Ken Saro-Wiwa entitled Doing Nothing is Not an Option. In order to provide structure as well as interest and humour to the project, I considered details such as mode of travel, embarkation point, and route in order to structure theme and narrative. As a result, the finished piece represents not only a spontaneous consideration of city space, diaspora, and gentrification but also an interaction (or a ‘brief encounter’) between the careful planning and inevitable spontaneity that are essential to both academia and travel, thus creating a dialogue between the disciplines.

An Environmental Unconscious? Nigerian Oil Politics, Autonomous Partial Objects, and Ken Saro-Wiwa's <em>Sozaboy</em>

My article starts by disproving the established critical consensus that Ken Saro-Wiwa's Sozaboy features a child soldier. Instead, I argue, we see a tactical psychopathy at work, in which the adult soldier's flattened moral choices and fluid political affiliations become expedients to ensure his survival. As a consequence, I argue, the soldier's libidinal attachments become insecure. Correspondingly, objects in the world of Saro-Wiwa's book become animated and partially autonomous. My article turns to the autonomous partial object to pioneer a model of non-anthropocentric environmental agency, which I term an “environmental unconscious.” I establish this argument with the help of Melanie Klein's psychoanalytic work on part-objects. Klein allows us to infer that the infant's earliest introjective identifications with the breast and its projective identifications with feces involve fantasies of consumption and pollution. These identifications contribute to the eventual making of the subject and its subsequent psychic dispositions. That is to say, the part-objects from which all of our later identifications proceed are always already enmeshed in an early environmental politics. Within this conceptual schema, the autonomous partial object (which Zizek terms an “organ without a body”) becomes readable, in relief, as an obdurate environmental agency whose independence both retains and exceeds human attachments. Accordingly, Sozaboy's repeated emphasis on renegade organs, disembodied voices, and Mene's involuntary bodily response can be thought of as moments in which the environment speaks what the befuddled human protagonist is unable to formulate. I argue that what is articulated in such moments is the silent but ever-present legacy of oil production in the Niger Delta, which becomes something like the unconscious of Saro-Wiwa's book. Moreover, the ambivalence of Kleinian object relations allows us to sustain, without contradiction, the three mutually exclusive outcomes for Mene's mother and Agnes in Saro-Wiwa's plot. My article an unspoken genocidal impulse.27 This riverine imaginary expresses no fallen world—pronouncements of cataclysm invite an unspoken managerial impulse. Instead, this is a world in which the dead remain half-present, in which the inert are part-enlivened. Like ancestors or shades, their ways and relations are opaque. All told, Sozaboy's distorted extremities of the human (patterned for instance, in Mene's dropsical “elephantiasis” [114] or in his priapic “snake”) amount finally to modes of environmental restitution (received, for instance, via the elephantine and the serpentine tout court). In Biafra's figurative throes of the human, a habitable landscape returns startlingly on the page-plane to assert its viable alternatives of promise. Perhaps, in our own good time, we might imagine an embattled partial object or two happening upon this spirit-scene and offer our determination that these animated newcomers will flourish—a “man,” a “snake,” standing “small small,” a “Johnny-Just-Come.”

Introduction: Ken Saro-Wiwa as Public Intellectual

Introduction: Ken Saro-Wiwa as Public Intellectual

“We all stand before history”: (Re)Locating Saro-Wiwa in the Biafran War Canon

Since Ken Saro-Wiwa's execution in 1995, critical accounts of his intellectual legacy have tended to focus on the influence of the Ogoni struggle on his writing and as a consequence have overlooked the role played by the Nigeria-Biafra War in the development of his intellectual sensibility. Given that Saro-Wiwa worked as a government administrator during the war, and wrote a novel, a memoir, and a book of poetry in response to the conflict, this article works to relocate his legacy in the trajectory of Biafran War literature. By exploring Saro-Wiwa's negotiation of ideas of canon and history in his Biafran War writing, it argues that the civil war is a traumatic but transformative preoccupation of his literary and political work. In doing so, it draws on theoretical insights about the self-reflexive narration of history and trauma and engages with the potential for poetry to textually reembody marginalized voices.

The Textual Politics of the Land in the Writings of Ken Saro-Wiwa

The Textual Politics of the Land in the Writings of Ken Saro-Wiwa

RESURGENCE OF MILITANCY IN OGONILAND: SOCIO-ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE

Militant activities, which are mostly localized in Ogoniland, Nigeria, have remained a threat to the security of the country since the death of Ken Saro-Wiwa and nine Ogoni members when they were hanged during military rule. As a way of drawing attention to itself, the militant Ogoni group initiated violence campaigns which resulted in the massive killing of many multinational oil workers and security forces. To understand how militancy came to be such a Gordian knot in Nigeria’s contemporary security situation, one should have an understanding of Ogoniland’s reality as well as the social and economic history.