Abstract
This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the death of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni Eight, executed by the Nigerian state after a trial overseen by judges loyal to the military dictatorship of General Sani Abacha. Here, we reproduce a selection of Saro-Wiwa’s poems and an extract from his final speech to the tribunal that sentenced him to death. The author goes on to consider the legacy of Saro-Wiwa’s struggle against the ecological destruction of his homelands wrought by Big Oil’s Shell. Despite the results of a landmark legal action against Shell, resolved in favour of the plaintiffs, those living in the Niger Delta continue to pay a heavy toll for decades of oil extraction, for which Shell still evades responsibility. While Shell has yet to implement a programme of environmental recovery, and corruption in Nigeria remains endemic, the author argues that impunity is rendered unsustainable by Saro-Wiwa’s enduring impact on the political consciousness of the Ogoni people and others, and the growing connectedness of environmental justice struggles the world over.
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