In November 1995, while
an overwhelming international outcry mounted against the execution of the Ogoni
leader, Ken Saro-Wiwa and his colleagues, defiant military
dictator, Sani Abacha, backed by a small band of military officers,
convinced themselves that executing them, swiftly, was the best way to resolve
the Ogoni unrest “once and for all”, and to make it clear to Nigerians and the
world the authoritarian regime was no weakling.
A recording of the final meeting, where the decision to hang Mr.
Saro-Wiwa and eight of his associates was taken, said, two days before the
execution, Mr. Abacha told members of the Provisional Ruling Council, PRC, the
regime’s highest decision making body, that the activists deserved no sympathy,
and that hanging them would stem further discontent and prove to the world the
regime was bold and courageous.
“He was of the view that no sympathy should be shown on the
convicts so that the sentence will be a lesson to everybody. He stated that the
Ogoni issue had lingered on for a very long time and should be addressed once
and for all,” Mr. Abacha was quoted in the document now available exclusively
to PREMIUM TIMES.
We obtained the memo from highly placed sources familiar with
the proceedings and who requested not to be named so the Nigerian government
does not hound them. We took further measures to ensure the documents are
authentic including checking with other sources knowledgeable about the matter.
The former head of state said Mr. Saro-Wiwa was a foreign agent
used to destabilize Nigeria, and a “separatist” who cloaked himself as an
environmental activist, but whose true intention was to split the country and
subvert its authority.
Members of the PRC at the time were Mr. Abacha; Maj.
General Patrick Aziza (Minister of Communications under Abacha); Major
Gen. Tajudeen Olarenwaju (GOC); General Abdulsalami Abubakar
(Chief of Defence Staff); Lt. General Oladipo Diya (Chief of General
Staff); Maj. Gen. Victor Malu (GOC); Ibrahim Coomasie (Inspector General
of Police); Mike Akhigbe (Chief of Naval Staff); Maj. General Ishaya
Bamaiyi (Chief of Army Staff); Nsikak Eduok (Chief of Air Staff);
Lt. Gen. Jeremiah Useni (Minister of the Federal Capital Territory)
and Michael Agbamuche (Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of
Justice).
Mr. Saro-Wiwa, a respected writer, activist and environmental
campaigner, had been sentenced to death by a military tribunal set up by the
regime. He was accused of masterminding the killings of four prominent Ogoni leaders
– charges he forcefully denied.
The charges were widely viewed as framed to silence Mr.
Saro-Wiwa’s campaign against the exploitation and degradation of the Ogoni land
by international oil majors, especially Shell.
But while a global campaign to block the implementation of the
tribunal’s verdict intensified, the regime, on November 10, 1995, two days
after its meeting, staged a fast-tracked execution of the ruling, with a
gruesome hanging of the nine leaders.
Others killed were
Saturday Dobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel Gbooko, Paul Levera, Felix Nuate, Baribor Bera, Barinem Kiobel, and John Kpuine.
The condemnations
The killings sparked
international outrage. While the European Union and the United States
placed economic embargo and other restrictions on the country, the
Commonwealth promptly suspended the country from its fold.
Shell, at the centre of the unrest, was accused of complicity in
the killings, with allegations it sponsored the military junta’s onslaught on
Ogoniland.
The company denied the allegations despite testimonies stating
otherwise, and a $15.5 million out-of-court settlement it agreed in favour of
the families of the victims in 2009. Shell said the payment was not a
concession of guilt, but a gesture of peace.
The minutes of the military council meeting preceding the
executions, a four-page memo, kept secret for years, document the
behind-the-scenes moves, at the highest echelons of the Abacha regime’s
decision-making organ, as it hurried through with the executions.
The details shed light on how the junta, accused of rights
violations and fierce brutality, considered an unprecedented domestic and
international calls to suspend the killings.
Besides deciding to
forge ahead with the execution, the document states, the PRC offered frantic
justification for the killings, planned broad state-sponsored propaganda
against the Movement for the Survival of
the Ogoni People, MOSOP; considered the proscription of MOSOP; and
how to further divide the group’s ranks, and “neutralize” its members.
Mr. Abacha chaired the meeting on November 8, 1995, and led
junta officials through a deliberation that sought a speedy implementation of
the death verdicts-which was implemented less than 48 hours after the meeting.
Ignoring pressure
While a global campaign pushed for the rulings of the Kangaroo
tribunal to be shelved, the minute shows, the 11-member PRC, comprising service
chiefs, top military commanders, the Inspector General of Police and the
Attorney General of the Federation, never considered backing down.
Instead, junta officials warned that a reversal would portray
weakness. They accused the international community of double standards;
choosing, for economic reasons, to look the other way when similar state
decisions were taken elsewhere.
“The council was advised not to yield to pressure from the West,
championed by the United States of America. The council was reminded that the
Arab countries visited crimes with measurable punishment for which the West saw
nothing wrong because of their economic interest,” the minutes said.
“It was therefore advocated that minimum time be wasted between
the council decision its implementation,” it adds.
The junta described Mr. Saro-Wiwa‘s alleged crime as “heinous”
and accused the media of attempting to whip up sympathy for him and the other
accused.
“It was cautioned that if members soft-pedaled, the
administration would be regarded as a weakling,” the document states.
The ‘Ungrateful’ Ogoni’s
With the backing of the council members, Mr. Abacha then
declared that “anyone who killed his fellow citizen did not deserve to live”.
Mr. Abacha believed the Ogonis were asking for too much, and
were ungrateful for “sizeable federal investment” located in the area- possibly
a reference to Onne port and Eleme petrochemicals, both near Port Harcourt.
Despite the extensive considerations, barely did the meeting
brook counter-opinion not in line with Mr. Abacha’s.
A suggestion by an unnamed member that in future such trials
should be conducted by civil courts not to unnecessarily rile the international
community was promptly overruled by Mr. Abacha who spoke of his preference for
military tribunal for its speed.
“On whether the military tribunals should be replaced with civil
courts, he expressed preference for military tribunals which he said considered
and decided cases with dispatch,” the minutes said of Mr. Abacha.
The tribunal that convicted Mr. Saro-Wiwa turned out amongst the
most controversial. Headed by Justice Ibrahim Auta, the current Chief Judge of
the Federal High Court, the panel delivered a speedy, but severely criticized
verdict on October 31, 1995, barely nine months after it was convened.
The panel faced severe criticism for alleged high-handedness,
prompting defense lawyers, led by late Gani Fawehinmi, Femi Falana and Olisa
Agbakoba, to stand down after accusing the Auta-led tribunal of violating all
known judicial ethics and rules.
Mr. Auta, then a mid-career judge, turned down two key requests
from the defence team, namely, two weeks of access to Mr. Saro-Wiwa and the
rest, (having been denied access to their counsels); and an order transferring
the accused from a military cell in Port Harcourt to a civil prison.
Mr. Saro-Wiwa and his colleagues were condemned to death without
legal representations.
In years, Mr. Auta has risen to become a Chief Judge while the
lead prosecutor, Joseph Daudu, is the immediate past chairman of the Nigerian
Bar Association.
Praising Justice Auta, others
As the military brass met that November 8, 1995, the
severely-castigated tribunal came up for a decent dose of praise for its
“painstaking consideration” of the facts.
Mr. Saro-Wiwa’s campaign dated decades, but peaked in the 1990s
as he struggled to draw national and international attention to the
deprivations the Ogonis faced while Shell and American firm, Chevron, degraded
their land and carted away billions of petrodollars.
Arrested and released repeatedly, the crisis took a fatal twist
after four Ogoni leaders – accused of selling out to the government and Shell-
were mobbed to death by some youth.
Mr. Saro-Wiwa denied the youth carried out his order; a claim
countered by the military government, which, before then, had endured
devastating restiveness the activist led to cripple oil production.
In turn, the military was accused of staging the killings as a
way of eliminating the activists.
As the Abacha government faced the Saro-Wiwa episode in 1995, it
had its hands full with a coup’detat case in which former president, Olusegun
Obasanjo, and others were indicted.
Amid international condemnation against the coup indictments, an
allegation also viewed as staged to hound opponents, the regime backed down
from its initial plan to execute the alleged coup plotters. But it later
regretted that compassion, feeling it acted feebly.
The Saro-Wiwa case presented an opportunity to right that wrong
and proved a strong point, the document said.
“Council was reminded that the government’s decision on the
plotters had sent wrong signals to the generality of Nigerians and that the
current case should be used to correct that wrong impression,” the minute said.
That concern turned up repeatedly in the meeting, according to
the recordings, with some members appearing to compare the relatively mild
response to the alleged plotters to the draconian reaction that trailed the
Ogoni’s case.
Mr. Abacha laid that concern to rest as the meeting wound up,
declaring that while the Ogonis’ case was a “premeditated murder”, the alleged
coup plotters had yet to carry out their plot.
The Ogoni’s have a case
In a brief humane consideration, the council conceded that the
trouble in Ogoniland was a result of years of neglect, failure and pent-up
anger.
But members also swiftly argued that agitators like Mr.
Saro-Wiwa were mischief makers who cashed in on a genuine grievance to seek
selfish motives.
“It was therefore not surprising that a few mischievous
individuals could exploit the situation for their selfish ends,” minute said.
“Council was therefore urged to approve the judgment of the tribunal and
ensure its expeditious implementation.”
Download full memo below.
PDF
Download link
Download link
JPGs
(4 files)
UPDATE: This post was updated with the paragraph below:
“We obtained the memo from highly placed sources familiar with the
proceedings and who requested not to be named so the Nigerian government does
not hound them. We took further measures to ensure the documents are authentic
including checking with other sources knowledgeable about the matter.”
Source:
Premium Times
No comments:
Post a Comment