Coalition against Dictatorshiop (CAD), Nigerian Casefile: The Ken Saro-Wiwa-Ogoni Handbook

Compiled by the Coalition Against Dictatorship (CAD), 20 November 1995

(SECTION 1)

The Ken Saro Wiwa Campaign
Some History
The Issue
Saro Wiwa's Trial and Execution
Saro Wiwa's Closing Statement at the Tria
The Difference You Can Make
Nigerian Oil and the West: The Moral Challenge
The Challenge of Nigeria: A Call to World Conscience
Ken Saro Wiwa, preface to *Genocide in Nigeria: the Ogoni Tragedy*

(SECTION 2, in a separate mail file)

Ken Saro Wiwa, The World Bank and Us
Chuks Iloegbunam, The Death of a Writer
(an obituary by a Nigerian journalist)
F. W. J. Mnthali, Farewell, Ken Saro-Wiwa! (a poetic memorial by the renowned Malawian poet)
The Writings of Ken Saro Wiwa: A Bibliography
Appendix 1: Action against the Nigerian junta and its backers: Harvard students take the lead
Appendix 2: Wole Soyinka, Why the General Killed

THE KEN SARO WIWA CAMPAIGN

Ken Saro Wiwa was a prominent Nigerian author, television producer, environmental activist and leader of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP). The Ogoni are a minority ethnic group of about 500,000 people in Nigeria's oil-rich Southeastern Rivers State. Once an agricultural region with fertile soils, the Ogoni land and water have been devastated by pollution by multi- national oil companies with assistance from Nigeria's military dictatorship. MOSOP was set up to defend the environmental and human rights of the Ogoni community. Because the Nigerian government considers mineral resources within its territory to be automatically federally owned, the idea of special rights and reparations for local communities are alien to it. Oil provides about 80 percent of Nigeria's export revenue. Oil companies with significant presence in Nigeria are the Anglo/Dutch Shell Group, Chevron Corp., Mobil Corp., France's Elf Aquitaine SA and Italy's Agip SpA. Ken Saro Wiwa and eight others were recently executed after a sham trial on trumped up charges of murder.

SOME HISTORY

The Ogoni people of Nigeria have their lands in Rivers State, a part of Nigeria near the delta of the river Niger. This has historically been a fertile area, and consequently is highly populated. It is also the first place in Nigeria from where the Anglo/Dutch transnational Shell began extracting oil in 1958. At that time, Nigeria was still a British colony. It is estimated that $30 billion worth of oil has been extracted from Ogoni lands since then.

Ogoniland has been important to Nigeria for two reasons: Firstly, it has been termed the breadbasket of Rivers State, a major food producing area, and secondly, since 1958 it has been the source of more than 900 million barrels of crude oil, vital to the Nigerian economy.

THE ISSUE

Although international attention is now being focussed on democracy in Nigeria, and pressure is being placed on the Nigerian dictatorship of General Sani Abacha to democratize the country, little is said of the role of the Western transnational corporations which prop up the Abacha's dictatorship.

Shell has been exploiting oil in Nigeria without consulting or compensating the Ogoni people in any way. The Ogoni people are a minority, and thus have little political power, since the Nigerian constitution does not protect minority interests. They have no mineral rights to their land, since all mineral rights are owned by the state. They are expected to be passive victims when oil spills, blowouts, and invasive pipe laying cause environmental damage. Hiding behind the dictatorial military, Shell has always turned a blind eye to the damages caused by its operations. For Shell's operations, says a news report, the Ogoni people have received virtually nothing except a ravaged environment. Once fertile farmland has been laid waste by constant oil spills and acid rain. Puddles of ooze the size of football fields dot the landscape, and fish and wildlife have vanished. Shell would be slapped with hefty fines if it were to pollute any European or American country one-tenth as much as it did in Nigeria. The Exxon Oil spill in Alaska in 1989 and the reparations afterward is still fresh in our memory.

In 1990, the Ogoni started to mobilize against the human and environmental injustice perpetrated upon them. They formed MOSOP, the Movement for Survival of Ogoni People, a peaceful resistance movement which attempted to highlight their plight, under the leadership of Ken Saro-Wiwa. Shell suspended its activities in Ogoniland in 1993, partly as a result of the Ogoni campaign. But it still pumps more than 250,000 barrels of oil a day in Nigeria, nearly 12 percent of Shell's international oil output.

The government's response to MOSOP's protests has been brutal. Ogoniland is now sealed off, and under martial law. Ken Saro Wiwa has been executed, along with 8 other Ogoni. Hundreds of Ogoni have been murdered. Shell's role in this is significant—the most extreme brutalities against the Ogoni happened after Shell expressed concern about perceived local threats to its smooth functioning, to the Nigerian government. A memo signed by Major Okuntimo of the Rivers State Internal Security Task Force, dated May 12th 1994, states: Shell operations still impossible unless ruthless mlitary operations are undertaken for smooth economic activities to commence. The document goes on to recommend the wasting of Ogoni leaders. Ken Saro Wiwa was arrested on May the 22nd, 10 days later.

The blatant disregard for human rights that Shell Nigeria has displayed in its dealings with the Ogoni show it to be two-sided in its international relations. The abuses that it perpetrates in Nigeria (directly in the form of spills and blowouts, and indirectly by the Nigerian government which it leans on to protect its interests) would be unacceptable in the countries where Shell sells most of its oil. Whilst Shell International claims that its actions and those of Shell Nigeria are not linked, this is a transparent ploy to deny culpability. Shell profits are built upon Ogoni suffering. The Shell which fully supports democracy at home is the same Shell that actively promotes tyranny and barbarism abroard.

SARO WIWA'S TRIAL AND EXECUTION

Ken Saro Wiwa and 15 other Ogonis were arrested in May 1994 after the deaths of four local pro-government Ogoni chiefs during a melee at a political rally. He was held in leg irons, and denied access to his family, doctors and legal counsel for eight months before being charged with murder. The charge was so baseless and devoid of concrete evidence that Amnesty International declared Saro Wiwa a Prisoner of Conscience. Even the government itself did not trust its own case enough to produce the predetermined result it wants--the elimination of vocal Ogoni leaders like Saro Wiwa--in the normal law courts that it created instead a military-dominated Special Tribunal to hear the case, though this was a civil offense. Such tribunals are answerable ONLY to the military government and there is NO right of appeal. It should be noted that the Nigerian military generally considers what goes on in civil courts to be too much English and a waste of time. The defense team was frustrated at every step of the way by the Special Tribunal. The tribunal rejected defense evidence of the bribing of two key prosecution witnesses testifying against Saro Wiwa. The charade was so obvious that the defense resigned from the proceedings, feeling, as everyone felt, that the tribunal was predetermined to find the defendants guilty. Saro Wiwa and eight others--Dr. Barinem Kiobel, Saturday Dobee, Paul Levura, Nordu Eawo, Felix Nuate, Daniel Gbokoo, John Kpuinen and Baribor Bera--were found guilty and sentenced to death on October 31, 1995. Despite international appeals for clemency, they were hanged on November 10, 1995. Saro Wiwa won the 1995 Goldman Environmental Prize for Africa, awarded by a San Francisco-based foundation.

SARO-WIWA'S CLOSING STATEMENT TO THE NIGERIAN MILITARY APPOINTED SPECIAL TRIBUNAL

Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria

My lord,

We all stand before history. I am a man of peace, of ideas. Appalled by the denigrating poverty of my people who live on a richly endowed land, distressed by their political marginalization and economic strangulation, angered by the devastation of their land, their ultimate heritage, anxious to preserve their right to life and to a decent living, and determined to usher to this country as a whole a fair and just democratic system which protects everyone and every ethnic group and gives us all a valid claim to human civilization, I have devoted my intellectual and material resources, my very life, to a cause in which I have total belief and from which I cannot be blackmailed or intimidated. I have no doubt at all about the ultimate success of my cause, no matter the trials and tribulations which I and those who believe with me may encounter on our journey. Nor imprisonment nor death can stop our ultimate victory.

I repeat that we all stand before history. I and my colleagues are not the only ones on trial.

Shell is here on trial and it is as well that it is represented by counsel said to be holding a watching brief. The Company has, indeed, ducked this particular trial, but its day will surely come and the lessons learnt here may prove useful to it for there is no doubt in my mind that the ecological war that the Company has waged in the Delta will be called to question sooner than later and the crimes of that war be duly punished. The crime of the Company's dirty wars against the Ogoni people will also be punished.

On trial also is the Nigerian nation, its present rulers and those who assist them. Any nation which can do to the weak and disadvantaged what the Nigerian nation has done to the Ogoni, loses a claim to independence and to freedom from outside influence. I am not one of those who shy away from protesting injustice and oppression, arguing that they are expected in a military regime. The military do not act alone. They are supported by a gaggle of politicians, lawyers, judges, academics and businessmen, all of them hiding under the claim that they are only doing their duty, men and women too afraid to wash their pants of urine. We all stand on trial, my lord, for by our actions we have denigrated our Country and jeopardized the future of our children. As we subscribe to the sub-normal and accept double standards, as we lie and cheat openly, as we protect injustice and oppression, we empty our classrooms, denigrate our hospitals, fill our stomachs with hunger and elect to make ourselves the slaves of those who ascribe to higher standards, pursue the truth, and honor justice, freedom, and hard work. I predict that the scene here will be played and replayed by generations yet unborn. Some have already cast themselves in the role of villains, some are tragic victims, some still have a chance to redeem themselves. The choice is for each individual.

I predict that the denouement of the riddle of the Niger delta will soon come. The agenda is being set at this trial. Whether the peaceful ways I have favored will prevail depends on what the oppressor decides, what signals it sends out to the waiting public. In my innocence of the false charges I face Here, in my utter conviction, I call upon the Ogoni people, the peoples of the Niger delta, and the oppressed ethnic minorities of Nigeria to stand up now and fight fearlessly and peacefully for their rights. History is on their side. God is on their side. For the Holy Quran says in Sura 42, verse 41: All those that fight when oppressed incur no guilt, but Allah shall punish the oppressor. Come the day.

THE DIFFERENCE YOU CAN MAKE

Shell must know that it can't make profit out of the blood of the Ken Saro Wiwa and the Ogoni. Abacha must know that tyranny is universally unacceptable. The only way that this will happen is broad, strong action by all the people of the world. We call on all people who love freedom and justice to:

Lobby your leaders to intervene on the behalf of MOSOP and the Nigerian people. Strong international action is necessary, not just talk. Demand for full sanctions. Demand for a freeze on the personal assets abroard of Nigerian military and government officials. Here are useful addresses: [...]
Boycott all Shell products and inform Shell of your boycott. Remember, the joint venture operated by Shell in Nigeria is responsible for 70% of the Nigerian state's revenue—Shell is funding murder in Nigeria. Shell is the Nigerian military's enter of gravity. Call Shell Directly and ask them to scale back operations in Nigeria; also ask them to explain their decision to continue the $3 billion LNG project.

Don't be deceived by Shell propaganda that sanctions would hurt ordinary Nigerians; tell Shell you heard that line before during sanctions against South Africa and that you are no fool. Nigerians say they want sanctions and are ready to bear it until the dawn of freedom. Tell Shell to keep its kindness, and ask it since when has it lost any sleep over the welfare of ordinary Nigerians. Shell recently said in a paid advertisement in British newspapers (11/19/95): It's easy enough to sit in our comfortable homes in the West, calling for sanctions and boycotts against a developing country. But you have to be sure that knee-jerk reactions won't do more harm than good. Tell Shell it should be ashamed of itself for this absolute vulgarity and thinly disguised intimidation; tell Shell you weren't born yesterday to be so cheaply muscled into the corner of guilt for demanding sanctions. Tell Shell the title of its ad, Clear Thinking in Troubled Times, is really Clear Thinking to Profit Enormously from Tragic Times. And finally, tell Shell to answer this question posed by Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian Nobel Laureate: Has the revenue of Nigeria ever reached the people? Soyinka continues, There's no reason why a total, comprehensive trade embargo shouldn't be enforced now. Even (former South African President F.W.) De Klerk says sanctions were the greatest force that brought apartheid down. Here are useful Shell addresses:

---Shell USA: 1-800-331-3703.

---P. J. Carroll, President, Shell Oil Company, Houston, Texas Fax: 713-241-5522

---Steven Ward, Vice President for Government Relations, Washington DC. Fax: 202-466-1498

---http://www.shellus.com/cgi- bin/page_feedback.cgi/OilProducts/abt- shl/wwwadmin:Shell_Web_Feedback

---Christopher Fay, Shell UK Ltd, Shell Mex House, The Strand, London W2CR ODX U.K. Phone: 44-0171-257-3000; Fax: 44-0171-257-3939

---C.A.J. Herkstroter, Chairman, Royal Dutch Shell, Carel van Builantlandtlaan 30, 2596 HR The Hague, The Netherlands. Fax (public affairs office in London): 44-0171-934-5555

Model Fax to Shell Oil Company (from AIUSA)

Please either sign the model letter yourself or print it out to use as a petition signed by as many people as you can fit on the page and fax it.

P. J. Carroll
President, Shell Oil Company
Houston Texas
713-241-5522
Steven Ward
Vice President for Government Relations
Washington DC
202-466-1498
I'm writing to express my shock, dismay and outrage at the execution in Nigeria of Ken Saro Wiwa, Dr. Barinem Kiobel and eight others on Nov. 10, 1995. This tragic killing of these peaceful environmental activists should never have happened. I expected Shell Oil to do all it could to stop the violations and save lives. I understand that the only public action Shell took to prevent this travesty was at the 11th hour in a letter requesting clemency. Shell Oil must now strongly and publicly condemn the Nigerian government for this brutal action.
Despite Shell's contention that it had nothing to do with human rights violations in Ogoniland, the fact remains that Ken Saro Wiwa and his MOSOP organization were protesting environmental degradation due to Shell operations. In addition, the commander of the military unit that committed gross human rights violations in Ogoniland during May and August of 1994 boasted at a press conference that these actions were taken to protect Shell installations.
Shell Oil has publicly expressed concern about the reaction in Nigeria to these executions. Shell can contribute to peaceful dialogue in Nigeria through visible, concrete actions to prevent future arrests, unfair trials, or executions of peaceful activists. In the effort to crush the Ogoni movement, homes were destroyed by the military in 30 villages. One concrete step Shell could take is to contribute to relief for those who were displaced and to reconstruction of destroyed homes.
Shell should join world leaders, business leaders and concerned citizens around the world in an effort to gain the release of all prisoners of conscience in Nigeria and demand a return to rule of law and respect for international human rights in Nigeria.
Sincerely, . . .

NIGERIAN OIL AND THE WEST: THE MORAL CHALLENGE

Nigeria's crude oil is probably the purest in the world. Generally called sweet crude as opposed to sour crude from Saudi Arabia and other regions, Nigeria Light has only 0.2% sulfur. >From fractional distillation, you could get about 33% gasoline, 20% kerosene, 16% light gas oil, 30% heavy gas oils, leaving ONLY 1% bitumen residue. Compare these figures with, say, Boscan Venezuelan crude which has 6.4% sulfur, only 3% gasoline, 6% kerosene, 7% light gas oil, 26% heavy gas oils, and a whopping 58% bitumen residue. This then is why Nigeria's crude is the dream oil of the advanced industrial countries of Europe and America: its lightness makes for cheaper distillation. These countries already have extensive road networks, so they would rather not buy, if they could, crude oil with high bitumen residue.

The quickest solution to the Nigerian crises, both the minority rights question and the larger issue of democratization, is an oil embargo. Nelson Mandela himself (an acknowledged moral voice on the continent), formerly lukewarm on the matter of oil sanctions, has finally embraced it as the solution to averting a Rwandan-scale tragedy in Nigeria. Europe and America are the main buyers of Nigeria's oil. Nigeria exports about 1.6 million barrels per day; about 44 percent of it goes to the United States and another five percent to Canada. Europe buys the rest. Although the international outrage against the Nigeria military dictatorship is currently so high that many Western leaders are already hinting at the possibility of oil sanctions, we must not be smug on the matter and expect that the leaders will actually impose sanctions without our relentless push. An oil embargo on Nigeria will certainly affect prices in the West, and politicians are not known to actively embrace actions that would put them on the spot with their vocal electorates. Not especially at a time when elections are near as they are in the U.S.A. at this moment. Here then is the moral challenge for us citizens and residents of Europe and America. We ought to let our leaders know that we support full oil sanctions against Nigeria as a way to quickly restore that country to democracy and the path of glory that its great potentials eminently qualify it for; that we are ready to pay a few cents more at the gas pumps than continue to fund the military junta's subversion of the rule of law, repression of the press, proscription of oppositional movements, massive embezzlement of public funds and the judicial murder, assassinations, indiscriminate arrests and interminable detention without trial, of democracy- and peace-loving Nigerians. We should let our leaders know that we will not fill our tanks with Ogoni blood.

THE CHALLENGE OF NIGERIA: A CALL TO WORLD CONSCIENCE

by the International Coalition Against Oppression in Nigeria and the Forum for Creativity Towards the 21st Century. Tokyo Japan. November 15, 1995.

The latest outrage by the Nigerian military regime, in executing the writer and environmentalist, Ken Saro-Wiwa after a sham trial by hand-picked special tribunal, an execution that was hastily carried out in defiance of pleas by the international community, constitutes a fatal negation of civilized conduct and a denial of the fundamental human rights of accused persons. The Nigerian regime has flouted natural justice, the articles of the fundamental human rights of the United Nations, the Human Rights charter of the Organization of African Unity, and the Harare Commonwealth Declaration, to all of which the Nigerian government is a signatory.

This act of judicial murder is of course only the most notorious and horrifing of a long catalogue of other violations- arbitrary imprisonments, torture, extra-judicial killings, denial of freedom of expression, not to mention the callous programme of ethnic cleansing of the Ogoni people, all documented in great detail by various Human Rights organizations in and outside of Nigeria. We wish to call attention especially to the latest of these, titled: NIGERIA- STOLEN BY GENERALS, the report by the Commonwealth Human Righhts Initiative, compiled after a fact-finding mission to Nigeria this year.

It is clear that the present regime of Sani Abacha is resolved to stop at no act of terror and repression in order to perpetuate itself in power and thwart the rightful democratic aspirations of the Nigerian peoples, a choice that was clearly expressed in the elections of June 12, 1993. Those elections were acknowledged free and fair both by internal assessment and from international monitoring bodies, including the Commonwealth of Nations. The unjustifiable annulment of those elections constitute the root of Nigeria's current crisis. Not surprisingly, General Sani Abacha stubbornly keeps the winner of that election in prison, and under inhuman conditions, despite various decisions of the Nigerian courts that Bashorun Moshood M.K.O. Abiola, the President-Elect in question, should be set free.

We therefore call upon the international community to assist the Nigerian people in the attainment of their democratic aspirations and in restoring their society to the rule of law by isolating the Nigerian dictatorship totally from the international community, and subjecting that regime to the same set of universal sanctions that were applied to bring down the racial minority regime of apartheid South Africa. We call for the immediate release of all detained persons, including the former Head of State, General Olusegun Obasanjo and others who were tried in secret on trumped-up charges and sentenced to brutal terms of imprisonment.

Stability in that African sub-region can only be guaranteed by the quick restoration of democracy to this problematic, but crucially placed regional member, Nigeria. We call for the break of diplomatic, economic, sporting and cultural links with the illegal military regime of Nigeria. We call for a suspension of all ongoing economic projects in Nigeria, termination of all assistance programmes, and a ban on the sale of arms, military spare parts, and police equipment to Nigeria. WE CALL ESPECIALLY FOR AN EMBARGO ON NIGERIAN OIL WITH THE AIM OF STARVING THE REGIME OF FUNDS AND COMPELLING IT TO CEDE POWER TO THE DULY ELECTED DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT. We call for an urgent debate in the Security Council on the deteriorating state of human existence in Nigeria and a concrete plan of action that will be binding on its member states.

Approved by full Plenary assembly of over 1,700 world dignitaries.

Signatories include the following Nobel laureates: Michael Gorbachev, Kenzaburo Oe, Leo Esaki, Kenichi Fukui, Wole Soyinka, Desmond Tutu.

KEN SARO WIWA, PREFACE TO GENOCIDE IN NIGERIA: THE OGONI TRAGEDY (Port Harcourt: Saros, 1992; 103 pp.)

*Author's Note*

Writing this book has been one of the most painful experi- ences of my life. Ordinarily, writing a book is torture, a chore. But when, on ever page, following upon every word, every letter, a tragedy leaps up before the eyes of a write, he or she cannot derive that pleasure, that fulfillment in which the creative process often terminates.

What has probably worsened the matter is that I have lived through most of the period covered by this sordid story. I knew, as a child, that period from 1947 when the Ogoni saw, for a few brief years, the possibility of extricating themselves from the cruel fate which seems to have been ordained for them. I watched as they went into decline. I was privileged to play a role in the civil war which decimated them further and to assist in their rehabilitation at the end of that war.

Since then I have watched helplessly as they have been gradually ground to dust by the combined effort of the multi- national oil company, Shell Petroleum Development Company, the murderous ethnic majority in Nigeria and the country's military dictatorships. Not the pleas, not the writing over the years have convinced the Nigerian elite that something special ought to be done to relieve the distress of the Ogoni.

I have known and argued earnestly since I was a lad of seventeen that the only way the Ogoni can survive is for them to exercise their political and economic rights. But because the Nigerian elite appear, on this particular matter, to have hearts of stone and the brains of millipedes; because Shell is a multi- national company with the ability to crush whomever it wishes; because the petroleum resources of the Ogoni serve everyone's greed, all the doors seemed closed.

Three recent events have encouraged me to now place the issue before the world: the end of the cold War, the increasing attention being paid to the global environment, and the insis- tence of the European Community that minority rights be respect- ed, albeit in the successor states to the Soviet Union and in Yugoslavia. What remains to be seen is whether Europe and America will apply in Nigeria the same standards which they have applied in Eastern Europe.

For what has happened and is happening to the Ogoni is strictly not the fault of the Nigerian elite and Shell Company alone; the international community has played a very significant role in it. If the Americans did not purchase Nigerian oil, the Nigerian nation would not be, nor would the oppressive ethnic majority in the country have the wherewithal to pursue its genocidal intentions. Indeed, there is a sense in which the Nigerian oil which the Americans, Europeans and Japanese buy is stolen property: it has been seized from its owners by force of arms and has not been paid for. Therefore, these buyers are receiving stolen property. Also, it is Western investment and technology which keep the Nigerian oil industry and therefore the Nigerian nation alive, oil being 94 percent of Nigeria's Gross Domestic Product.

Also, European and American shareholders in multi-national oil companies and manufacturers of oil mining equipment have benefitted from the purloining of Ogoni resources, the devasta- tion of the Ogoni environment and the genocide of the Ogoni people.

Thus, shareholders in the multi-national oil companies -- both Shell and Chevron—which prospect for oil in Ogoni, the American, Japanese and European governments, and the multi- national oil companies have a moral if not legal responsibility for ending the genocide of the Ogoni people and the complete devastations of their environment, if, indeed, that is still possible.

The requirement is enormous and urgent. The Ogoni people themselves including their children are determined to save whatever is left of their rich heritage. The international community can support this determination by championing the drive of the Ogoni for autonomy within Nigeria. The restoration of their rights, political, economic and environmental does not, cannot, hurt anyone. It will only place the responsibility for ending this dreadful situation where it should lie: on the Ogoni people themselves. The area being reich in resources and the people resourceful, the Ogoni will be able to sort out their problem in time.

Secondly, the international community must prevail on Shell and Chevron which prospect for oil in Ogoni, and the Nigerian Government which abets them, to stop flaring gas in the area immediately.

Thirdly, the international community can help by sending experts—medical, environmental and agricultural—to assist the Ogoni people restore a semblance of normality to Ogoni territory.

In the early years of this century, a French writer, Andre Gide, toured the Congo and observed the gross abuse of human rights being perpetrated in that country by King Leopold II of Belgium and his agents. He wrote about it and Europeans were sufficiently shocked to end the abuses.

I write now in the hope that the international community will, in similar fashion, do something to mitigate the Ogoni tragedy. It is bad enough that it is happening a few years into [before?] the twenty-first century. It will be a disgrace to humanity should it persist one day longer.

I expect the ethnic majority of Nigeria to turn the heat of their well-known vindictiveness on me for writing this book. I defy them to do so.

Some may wonder at my use of the word genocide to describe what has happened to the Ogoni people. The United Nations defines genocide as the commission of acts with intent to destroy a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. If anyone, after reading this book, has any further doubt of, or has a better description for, the crime against the Ogoni people, I will be happy to know it.

I wish to thank Barika Idamkue and Dr. Sonpie Kpone-Tonwe for kindly reading the manuscript and making valuable suggestions for improving the work; and my assistant, Hyacinth Wayi, for speedy word-processing.

All errors in the book are mine and I accept full responsi- bility for them.

Ken Saro-Wiwa
Port Harcourt, 1992

(END OF SECTION 1. PLEASE SEE SECTION TWO UNDER SEPARATE MAIL FILE)