Ken Saro-Wiwa

Kenule Beeson 'Ken' Saro-Wiwa (1941 – 1995) was a Nigerian author, television producer, environmentalist, and president of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP). A celebrated satirist and creator of Nigeria's most popular television comedy *Basi and Company*, Saro-Wiwa turned his creative energy to saving his Ogoni homeland in the Niger Delta.

For thirty years, multinational oil companies, primarily Royal Dutch Shell, had extracted billions of dollars of petroleum from Ogoniland, leaving the land devastated by acid rain, constant oil spills, and roaring gas flares that poisoned farming and fisheries. In 1990, Saro-Wiwa launched MOSOP and drafted the Ogoni Bill of Rights. In January 1993, he mobilized 300,000 Ogoni people in a massive peaceful demonstration that forced Shell to halt drilling in the region. Arrested by General Sani Abacha's military dictatorship on fabricated murder charges, Saro-Wiwa and eight colleagues (the 'Ogoni Nine') were condemned by a military tribunal and executed by hanging on November 10, 1995, triggering Nigeria's suspension from the Commonwealth.