Ken Saro-Wiwa: A voice against environmental degredation

“And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and REPLENISH THE EARTH” – Genesis 1:28
“It is not an investment if it is destroying the planet” – Vandana Silva

Martin Luther King Jr. once said: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.” The duty of preserving the environment must be a corporate responsibility; it must never be delegated! We must take both individual and corporate responsibilities for the preservation of our environment. There has been an appalling dearth in the number of patriotic citizens that are passionate about the environment over the past few years. We are living in an era where we practice destructive and unsustainable industrialization; industrialization without human face.

Humorously, I will emphatically say that modern technology owes ecology an apology. We have exploited the earth and environment disdainfully without the thought of the aftermath on future generations and our greed has irreversibly destroyed our creeds. Mahatma Gandhi captured it succinctly when he said, “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.” We are living in a country where the people that are supposed to be the custodian of our resources are providing the conducive environment for blatant impunity by multilaterals and multinational companies. These companies are profiting from our inability to set and enforce sustainable policies that will safeguard the environment.

“I’ll tell you this, I may be dead but my ideas will not die.”-Ken Saro-Wiwa
Napoleon Bonaparte once said: “The world suffers a lot, not because of the violence of bad people, but because of the silence of good people”. The world encroaches on our sanity the moment we begin to lose our sensitivity to injustice. In the time when people that are supposed to be the custodians of the hope and security of others grew numb to the sufferings of the citizenry, one man stood his ground in the fight against injustice and environmental exploitation to the end.

In January 1993, Saro-Wiwa gathered 300,000 Ogoni to march peacefully to demand a share in oil revenues and some form of political autonomy. Ken Saro-Wiwa led a peaceful movement for the environmental and human rights of Nigeria’s Ogoni people whose oil-rich land has been exploited by multinational oil companies. The Ogoni Bill of Rights calling for a measure of Ogoni political control of economic resources and the right to protect the Ogoni environment and ecology from further degradation was initiated and projected; the movement was declared as a non-violent protest against the depletion and deterioration of the Ogoni land.

It was a sordid end when Saro-Wiwa and eight other leaders of the Ogoni people’s rights movement, MOSOP, were hanged in Port Harcourt prison on November 10, 1995, in the face of international outrage for a selfless cause that was meant to restore the hopes and aspiration of the Ogoni people. Their trial was said to be fraudulent and the only crime he and his colleagues had committed was to demand sound environmental practices and to ask for compensation for the devastation of Ogoni territories.

“By our actions we have denigrated our Country and jeopardized the future of our children.”-Ken Saro Wiwa
The memory of Saro-Wiwa lives on while that of his persecutors had sunk into fading oblivion. Moments before his execution, he defied fear with one of his resounding quotes, “I am a man of ideas in and out of prison….my ideas will live.” Ken Saro-Wiwa’s life has provided a rich legacy of great inspiration for human rights and environmental activists around the world.

I would like to use this platform to appeal to the Niger Delta Avengers, Reformed Niger Delta Avengers and all emerging aggrieved Niger Delta militants to stop blowing up pipelines and oil installation in the country as it is economic sabotage against our nation. The militant approach in the Niger Delta region is gradually making them to lose the attention, sympathy and support of the global community. We cannot address injustice through violence; Saro-Wiwa used his pen, his voice and his trial to state his case more forcefully to a global audience. Fighting for the environment by destroying it is an indictment on our purpose and intentions; there are more sane ways of fighting for the cause of the Niger Delta without using guns and explosives.

The discovery of oil in Oloibiri, eastern Nigeria in 1956, has ironically become the doom of the region. The proceeds from the Nigerian oil have actually been used in ‘lubricating’ classical corruption and impunity in the present Nigeria. The exploration of oil was done with massive impunity to the extent that the region was environmentally degraded without the thought of the consequences on future generations. I was so much fascinated knowing that the federal government has designed a form of environmental remediation in the Niger Delta starting with the Ogoni clean-up project. We must align with global standards when it comes to the issue of oil exploration.

Scientific findings have vividly shown that the rate of environmental degradation puts life on earth at risk. A new research has found that humans are “eating away at our own life support systems” at a rate unseen in the past 10,000 years by degrading land and freshwater systems, emitting greenhouse gases and releasing vast amounts of agricultural chemicals into the environment.

It is poignant to note that all of these changes are shifting the earth into a “new state” that is becoming less hospitable to human life. We must scientifically discern how these factors intricately affect the lives, development, cultural practices and economic prospects of earth’s inhabitants.

Environmental agencies like NIMASA, IEMA, NES, must all rise up to defend the environment. The honourable Minister of Environment, Mrs Amina Mohammed, has reiterated severally the commitment of the federal government to the Ogoni clean-up exercise and also assured the full implementation of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) recommendations.

“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.”-Ken Saro-Wiwa

The kind of environment that we crave can only materialise on the wings of our renewed attitude. The greatest liability in life is a bad attitude and this has been obvious from the way we consume and the way we dispose wastes. Edmund Burke said, “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”

Though we may be a tiny part of a wider problem, but our resolution to keep the environment clean will always count. As patriotic citizens, let us take the days declared by various states in Nigeria for environmental sanitation seriously. Let us be committed and patriotic to rules and regulations that borders on the environment. Let us stop emptying our waste bins in undesignated locations and stop littering the environment with impunity.

I would like to encourage the populace to imbibe the three R’s of waste management: Reduce-Reuse-Recycle! We must not leave the fate of the environment in the hands of the government alone, it is our individual negligence that took us to this level and we must all make concerted efforts to replenish the earth, for this is a commandment from the Most High Himself! Robert Swan said, “The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.”

“In Nigeria, the only wrongdoers are those who do no wrong”- Ken Saro-Wiwa
In his legendary play, Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare said, “Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once”. I dedicate this piece to all the environmental fighters and activists that lost their lives in the process of fighting for a better tomorrow. I specially dedicate this to the blissful memory of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the fallen heroes of the Ogoni land, you demonstrated in death that injustice can kill the body but not the voice!

Ken Saro-Wiwa made literature more combative and ultimately got a moral victory over the agents of injustice. I have decided to garnish this piece with quotes from Ken Saro-Wiwa. He made a statement with his life and his pen. I will call these quotes “echoes in eternity”. Adieu Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa.

Next week, I will be writing on the 11th goal of the United Nations: Sustainable cities and Communities. Until then, act locally but think globally.

*To learn more on how you can get involved in these global goals, you can go to www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment.