B YRON C AMINERO -S ANTANGELO Of Freedom and Oil: Nation, Globalization, and Civil Liberties in the Writing of Ken Saro-Wiwa In 1994 Nigerian writer Ken Saro-Wiwa, along with eight other activists, was arrested for the murder of four Ogoni chiefs by a mob during a rally of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP). Even though he was far from the scene of the murder, and despite the fact that he unremittingly advocated the use of non-violence in the Ogonis’ struggle for their rights, Saro-Wiwa was charged with inciting the crowd through his speeches and activism. This was not the first time Saro-Wiwa had been detained. Under the regime of General Ibrahim Babangida, he was often arrested because of his ceaseless efforts both to rouse the Ogoni to resist their oppression by the joint forces of the Nigerian state and international oil and to muster support from the international community for the Ogoni cause. Yet, the result of this detainment was to prove different; Saro-Wiwa’s most recent arrest had been orchestrated by Nigeria’s new military autocrat, Sani Abacha, who was even more willing than his predecessors to flaunt civil liberties, civil rights, and international opinion. After being held for months without charge or trial, Saro-Wiwa was brought before a military tribunal handpicked by Abacha. The subsequent trial was a travesty. Prosecution witnesses admitted being bribed; the defense team was regularly harassed and threatened by security agents; and eventually “the bias of the tribunal was so blatant that the defense team withdrew, declaring that their continued participation would only give a semblance of legality to a patent circus spectacle” (Soyinka 146). On October 31, 1995, Saro-Wiwa was sentenced. In the London Guardian, Wole Soyinka noted that since “the judiciary, at nearly all levels, has been subverted” and because of “the institutionalization of secret tribunals whose composition is at the behest of Sani Abacha and his psychopathic cronies,” the verdict “was, of course, only too predictable. Abacha had decreed the death sentence for Ken Saro-Wiwa, and nothing else” (147). Despite an international outcry, Saro-Wiwa and the eight other MOSOP activists were hung to death on November 10. In the process, the Nigerian state showed itself willing to use any available means to silence its critics and instil fear by demonstrating its unrestrained, “unquestioned power of life and death over its citizens” (Quayson 72). 294 B YRON C AMINERO -S ANTANGELO However, as many commentators have remarked, Abacha lacked foresight regarding the effects of his actions (Bastian, Nixon “Pipe Dreams”): Abacha clearly had no conception of the cost of creating a martyred writer, an image with considerable pulling power in the media - doubly so since the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. The threat of censorship typically raises the hackles of journalists and writers because they are professionally invested in freedom of speech. From this viewpoint, the execution of a writer on false charges is more than just another human injustice; it also becomes, as Harold Pinter observes, ‘the most brutal form of censorship.’ It was predictable, therefore, that the image of Saro-Wiwa as writer-martyr would provoke intense journalistic outrage as well as the most vocal literary protest since the Rushdie affair … . So in death, Saro-Wiwa extended - surely beyond his imaginings - the remarkable coalition of international interests that he had begun to forge while alive, an alliance that brought together environmentalists, minority rights advocates, anti-racists, opponents of corporate deregulation, and defenders of freedom of speech. (“Pipe Dreams” 123-4) Concerns with issues of civil liberties resulting from Saro-Wiwa’s execution helped his cause not only by garnering sympathy and support but also by focusing attention on his message regarding the links among the oppressed and impoverished condition of the Ogoni, the devastation of their environment, the horrors of Nigeria’s military regimes, and the operation of international oil. Those concerns also reinforced a perception of the relationship between his fight against the combined forces of Shell, Chevron, and the Nigerian government and the struggle for civil liberties. Yet there were voices in the international press which, while deploring the transgression of civil liberties by the Nigerian government and condemning the Abacha regime, strove to deflect opprobrium and responsibility from oil companies and the effects of unregulated global capital. 1 These commentators and journalists followed the official Shell line, which was that foreign oil companies should not be held accountable for the actions of the Nigerian government. Being about civil liberties, this was a national matter, and the only responsible parties must be Nigerian. 2 To look at the 1 As Bastian notes, “conservative, pro-business Western newspapers like the Wall Street Journal refused to denounce Shell’s practices, although they seized upon the follies of the Abacha regime with alacrity as an example of what they wish to represent as the African continent’s continuing slide in to social/ political/ economic anarchy. The Economist actively defended Shell in its cover article in the edition of 18-24 November 1995” (132). 2 Shell’s general manager in Nigeria, Nnaemeka Achebe, told a reporter “Shell is the victim in this. We are caught in a situation where the communities can’t get at the real target - the government - to express their grievances, so they attack us” (Hammer 14). He also proclaimed, “we must be mindful not to interfere with local politics and be a government of some sort” (15). Of Freedom and Oil … 295 matter in this way, however, is (intentionally) to disconnect the issue of civil liberties from some of Saro-Wiwa’s key concerns such as the lack of economic remuneration to the Ogoni and the destruction of their environment by oil companies, as well as the close relationship between those companies and the Nigerian government. In his own writing, in contrast, Saro-Wiwa emphasizes those connections. A Month and a Day: A Detention Diary, in particular, achieves this effect both through its content and form. The book has two distinct parts. The beginning and ending focus on the story of Saro-Wiwa’s detention in 1993, after he had become a significant threat to the regime of General Babangida as both an effective spokesperson for the Ogoni people and as a kind of Gramscian intellectual striving to bring them to self-consciousness as a people. The rest of the “diary” tells the story both of the development of the Ogoni resistance movement and of the oppression and dispossession of the Ogoni under colonial and, especially, post-independence rule. Yet, the two “parts” of this text are linked, and Saro-Wiwa suggests in a number of ways how the framing narrative of his detention, which is a tale of the transgression of his personal civil liberties, cannot be separated from the situation of the Ogoni. The text as a whole emphasizes not only relationships among the problems of national oppression of minorities, unregulated global capital, and environmental destruction but also how these problems are inextricably intertwined with the issues of civil liberties and rights. Such synthesizing work is among Saro-Wiwa’s most important legacies, encouraging a rethinking of the individual issues, as well as a transformation of the agendas of activist organizations such as Greenpeace and Amnesty International. Yet, we should not approach his formulations uncritically; while insisting on the interpenetration of the issues and on the kinds of links Saro-Wiwa describes, we must also consider some of the tensions and contradictions such connections inevitably produce. Saro-Wiwa organizes the post-independence story of the Ogoni around the notion of “internal colonialism.” As an ethnic minority, they are politically marginalized both at the federal and state levels by the three ethnic majorities - Igbo, Yoruba, and Hausa/ Fulani - and have little voice in the acquisition and distribution of their resources. As a result, even though huge reserves of oil (Nigeria’s primary source of wealth) sit on Ogoni land, they receive little compensation for oil exploration and extraction. The government siphons off the wealth extracted from Ogoniland to create private fortunes for the ruling elites and to develop other parts of Nigeria, even as the Ogoni themselves lack all basic infrastructure and amenities such as electricity, potable water, roads, schools, and hospitals. The situation became especially severe after 1977. A new Nigerian constitution was imposed by the military junta which declared all land in Nigeria the prop- 296 B YRON C AMINERO -S ANTANGELO erty of the federal government, strengthened the central government, and “left the ethnic minorities totally unprotected in terms of their economic resources and their culture” (55). The result was that “by 1980 the Federal government had left the oil-bearing areas with only 1.5 per cent of the proceeds of oil production” (55). Saro-Wiwa also focuses on the ways that the Ogoni’s colonized condition results from international economic imperialism and the process of (economic) globalization. By working with the national government, oil companies are able to appropriate land from the Ogoni without compensation, bypass environmental regulation, and, as a result, cut down operating expenses. Basically, international oil maximizes profits at the expense of Nigeria as a whole, and especially its ethnic minorities, by enriching a small ruling elite who serve as middlemen and enforce the interests of foreign capital. Saro-Wiwa uses a vivid metaphor of a masquarade to describe this process: As Nigeria celebrated independence, the Ogoni were consigned to political slavery at the hands of the new black colonialists wearing the mask of Nigerianism. The new Nigerian masquerade was in the public arena, leashed to a rope held by an unseen hand, and steadied by the oil of the Ogoni and other peoples in the Niger River Delta. In effect, the producers of that oil, the mulitnational oil giants, truly controlled the masquerade in the arena. (186) This analogy closely echoes the scenario laid out by Frantz Fanon in “The Pitfalls of National Consciousness” in which, following independence, native elites “take on the role of manager for Western enterprise” even as they espouse nationalist rhetoric (154). Saro-Wiwa, however, was much more concerned with the relationship between subalternity and ethnicity in the development of neo-colonialism than Fanon, who focused primarily on the category of class. The destruction of the Ogonis’ environment through oil spills and leaks, the flaring of gas, and oil exploration is, according to Saro-Wiwa, the greatest crime committed against them. Their air, soil, and water have become indescribably polluted, their primary occupations - farming and fishing - are destroyed, and they suffer numerous environmentally induced health ailments including respiratory diseases and lead poisoning. 3 Dramatically 3 One commentator notes, “It is difficult to accurately describe the extent of the environmental degradation which has deprived [the Ogoni] of their economic lifeline (many commentators and first-time visitors shocked at the devastation have simply concluded that it is better seen than described! )” (Osaghae 5). Saro-Wiwa does his best in Genocide in Nigeria to depict these horrific conditions: The most notorious action of both [Shell and Chevron] has been the flaring of gas sometimes in the middle of villages, as in Dere, (Boma Oilfield) or very close to human habitation as in the Yorla and Korokoro oilfields in Ogoni. This action has Of Freedom and Oil … 297 bringing to the world’s attention the link between environmental degradation and both minority and human rights, Saro-Wiwa claims that the combination of “the 35-year-old ecological war waged by the multi-national companies, Shell and Chevron” and “a political war of tyranny, oppression and greed designed to dispossess the Ogoni people of their rights and their wealth” amounts “to genocide and … a grave crime against humanity” (148) (hence the title of a previous book, Genocide in Nigeria: The Ogoni Tragedy). According to Saro-Wiwa, the Ogoni failed to protest against such crimes in the past in part because of the colonial cultural mechanisms at work among them. They have been given an educational system which ignores and denigrates Ogoni language and culture in favor of the ethnic majorities’ cultures. The Ogoni, he declares, have been downtrodden by a “domestic colonialism” which not only includes “an outrageous denial of rights” and “a usurpation of our economic resources,” but also seeks “to demoralize our people by characterizing them as meek, obscure and foolish” (73). The result is a loss of collective confidence and identity which leads to an acceptance of their own colonized condition: “The Ogoni people have virtually lost pride in themselves and their ability, have voted for a multiplicity of parties in elections, have regarded themselves as perpetual clients of other ethnic groups and have come to think that there is nowhere else to go but down” (73). In the face of these conditions, Saro-Wiwa calls on the Ogoni to establish a sense of “unity, unanimity, and consensus” (72), in part by embracing an Ogoni identity and culture embedded in their pre-colonial and colonial history. The Ogoni must, he claims, “co-operate with one another, as individuals, as groups, because that is the only way we can survive” (75-6). They must also rediscover those collective traits necessary to achieve their salvation. Saro-Wiwa asserts that the history of the Ogoni reveals that they have “always been fierce and independent,” as well as “exceptional and original” destroyed ALL wildlife, and plant life, poisoned the atmosphere and therefore the inhabitants in the surrounding areas and made the residents half-dead and prone to respiratory diseases. Whenever it rains in Ogoni, all we have is acid rain which further poisons water courses, streams, creeks and agricultural land. Next to the flaring of gas comes the frequency of oil spills. Shell and Chevron use the most outdated equipment and technology in Ogoni, leading to innumerable oil spills which destroy farmlands, streams and water courses and the creeks. One of the greatest casualties of oil spills has been mangrove trees in the swamps which near-surround Ogoni. These trees which were a source of firewood, of seafood such as oysters, mussels, crabs and cockles, have been unable to survive the toxicity of oil. They have now been replaced by strange, valueless palms. Additionally, oil has poisoned the mudbanks which were formerly the home of mudskippers, clams, crabs and perwinkles. These rich sources of protein for the Ogoni people no longer exist. The result is that the fishermen of Ogoni have lost their occupation and Ogoni people no longer have protein in their food. (81-2) 298 B YRON C AMINERO -S ANTANGELO (72). Throughout the twentieth century, they have “struggled to resist colonialism and return to their much cherished autonomy and self-determination” (73). If they rely on their “age-old traditions” and their “genius,” they can, he proclaims, “extricate [themselves] from the quagmire in which [their] abundant wealth has paradoxically placed” them (110). Saro-Wiwa thus embraces the pastoral notion of a better future to be found in a return to a “true” identity from which the Ogoni have been violently wrenched: “I can confidently say that it is still possible to return to ‘the local culture,’ to ‘time-honoured traditions and customs,’ in short, to re-create societies which have been destroyed by European colonialism, neo-colonialism, or the newly inspired and even more destructive ‘black colonialism’” (190-1). 4 Of course, the Nigerian state did not only use ideological state apparatuses in order to prevent resistance; when the Ogoni began to unite and become politically active, all the weight of the repressive state apparatuses were used to silence them. Saro-Wiwa tells the story of his own detention to demonstrate this process. Held for almost a month before being formally charged or given a trial, when he was finally brought before a court the place of the trial was changed at the last minute in order to deny him proper council and to deny access to his supporters and the press. Furthermore, initially he was told by police that he was arrested for “election offences” (because of the MOSOP boycott of the Nigerian elections of 1993), but after the “nullification of the election” which should have “negated the basis of [his] arrest” (36), he was still held and eventually brought up on a trumped up charge of “sedition and unlawful assembly” (219). As Saro-Wiwa tells it, he was not surprised by these events, both because of his previous illegal detentions and because he had been threatened with detention many times if he did not stop his writing and other publicity work. Since he was the primary spokesman for the Ogoni, this effort to intimidate and silence him was also an effort to muffle the voice of the Ogoni on the national and international stage. Yet his detention was only one part of a larger pattern: the govern- 4 He also gives a spirited defense of this idea against “the convention in right-thinking Western circles that Africa’s tribes and ethnic groups are repressive colonial interventions”: “Far from being ‘repressive colonial inventions,’ Africa’s tribes and ethnic groups are ancient and enduring social organizations complete with their own mores and visions” (191). As is often the case with such arguments, Saro-Wiwa does not address the ambiguities of identity entailed in pre-colonial, colonial, and postcolonial history. It has been suggested that, although the Ogoni are an ethnic group in that they share many cultural traits, they do not have a myth of common origin, while the sub-groups among them do, and, as a result, these sub-groups “tend to engender stronger loyalties than the ‘Ogoni’ nation” (Osaghae 4). In other words, a sense of pan-Ogoni identity - the kind of identity Saro-Wiwa is calling for - may very well not be something pre-dating colonialism and post-independence Nigeria but something that is in the process of being forged. Of Freedom and Oil … 299 ment banned all public gatherings and demonstrations when the Ogoni planned mass protests; these protests were then met by government violence; MOSOP leaders were repeatedly harassed and detained by the police; and laws were enacted stipulating the death penalty for anyone uttering the words ethnic autonomy or seeking to alter the boundaries of local states. Saro-Wiwa also uses his experiences in detention as an opportunity to record the abuse of civil liberties and rights in Nigeria as a whole. He tells stories of journalists and activists he met who were held without charge or trial, whose arrests were kept quiet (even from their relatives), and who had been tried in front of illegal tribunals. In addition, a theme throughout the diary is the horrific conditions in Nigerian prisons and jails, which in themselves constitute a form of abuse. As he notes, “You can tell the state of a nation by the way it keeps its prisons, prisoners being mostly kept out of sight. Going by this criterion, Nigeria was in a parlous state indeed” (224). Finally, Saro-Wiwa emphasizes the wider effects of the abuses of civil liberties and rights he experienced by suggesting that they turn the nation itself into a kind of prison. In a poem he wrote while in prison entitled “The True Prison” he asserts “the security agent” and “the magistrate,” as well as “moral decrepitude/ Mental ineptitude/ Lending dictatorship spurious legitimacy,” contribute to turning “our free world/ Into a dreary prison” (221). 5 Although not a separatist, Saro-Wiwa claims that the ultimate solution for the Ogoni’s predicament is increased self-determination within a Nigerian confederation. This goal was expressed in the Ogoni Bill of Rights which was presented to the Nigerian government in 1990 and called for the Ogoni to “be granted Political Autonomy to participate in the affairs of the republic as a distinct and separate unit … provided that this autonomy guarantees the following: a) political control of Ogoni affairs by Ogoni people; b) the right to the control and use of a fair proportion of Ogoni economic resources for Ogoni development; c) adequate and direct representation as of right in all Nigerian national institutions; d) the use and development of Ogoni languages in Ogoni territory; e) the full development of Ogoni culture; f) the right to religious freedom; g) the right to protect the Ogoni environment and ecology from further degradation. (69) As this list suggests, Saro-Wiwa believed that increased political autonomy for the Ogoni is a means to bring about improved civil liberties and rights, economic and cultural development, better environmental protection, and a more 5 As Craig McLuckie notes, “the building of immediate, concretely realized physical surroundings into a metaphor for the state of the nation” (46-7) is a particularly effective (if obvious) conceit that runs throughout A Month and a Day. 300 B YRON C AMINERO -S ANTANGELO democratic Nigeria. In fact, Saro-Wiwa saw the struggle for ethnic autonomy within the nation as the hope for the future of Africa as a whole, and especially for a democratic Africa: “how wonderful it would be for Nigeria, for Africa, if the various ethnic nations that make it up could assert themselves in similar ways. We would be heading for a more democratic system, far from the dictatorships which have ruined the continent, and we might succeed in reordering our societies, undoing Berlin of 1884, so that there would not be so much exploitation at all levels in all parts of the continent” (134). This effort to link the struggle for Ogoni self-determination with the fight for minority rights and democracy throughout Africa is one example of Saro-Wiwa’s larger goal in A Month and A Day of connecting the plight of the Ogoni with the situations of others in order to garner support. As Rob Nixon notes, “Saro-Wiwa appreciated the improbability of converting an injustice against a small African people into an international cause. His strategic response was to scour the wider political milieu for possible points of connection” (113). The success of his strategy was reflected in his ability to enlist the support of a wide variety of groups, many of which did not initially see his concern with the Ogoni’s plight as linked with their agendas. For example, when he contacted Greenpeace and Amnesty International, the former were uninterested in his cause because they did not “work in Africa” and the latter were only interested in “conventional killings” as opposed to the deaths caused by environmental degradation (88-9). Eventually, he won them over, and, as Nixon argues, contributed to important developments within such organizations. In particular, Nixon claims that by encouraging a decentering and diversifying of environmental agendas - for example, by reimagining them in terms of “conflicts between subnational microminorities, autocratic nation-states, and transnational macro-economic powers” (“Environmentalism” 246) - Saro-Wiwa has helped move the environmental movement away from too strict a focus on (white, Western) concerns such as “purity preservation and Jeffersonian-style agrarianism” (243). 6 Obviously, Saro-Wiwa’s success in garnering international support resulted in part from his skills and experiences as a writer and a cultural worker. In the “diary,” he himself claims that his work in television, journalism, fiction, and publishing made him particularly suited for his role as spokesperson for the Ogoni. Yet, Saro-Wiwa also saw the necessity of working with and alongside his people in their struggle if he were to be able to put his skills to use for them. In Africa, he proclaims, “the writer must be l’homme engage: the intellectual man of action. He must take part in mass 6 Nixon compares this process to the way a previously white, privileged feminism “irrelevant to the need of third world women” has been “radically changed by the rise of local social movements” in the past 20 years (243). Of Freedom and Oil … 301 organizations. He must establish direct contact with the people and resort to the strength of African literature - oratory in the tongue. For the word is power and more powerful is it when expressed in common currency” (81). Saro-Wiwa was, in fact, a Fanonian intellectual who joined “the people in that fluctuating movement which they are just giving shape to” (227) and “turns himself into an awakener” (223), helping them to forge a revolutionary sense of collective identity and to engage in effective forms of collective action. (Direct examples of this aspect of his work can be found in A Month and a Day in the many texts of speeches to Ogoni audiences he includes.) Saro-Wiwa’s effectiveness both as spokesperson and as goad to collective action led to the efforts of the Nigerian government to silence him. As Ngugi wa Thiong’o points out, when the artist successfully helps create a liberatory narrative, especially when this narrative is being made with and among the people, the state both performs its power and attempts to control the performance of the artist through detention, exile, and/ or death. Yet, as Ngugi also points out, even in prison, the narrative battle between state and artist is not over: Prison narratives by artist-prisoners are essentially a documentation of the battle of texts and of the continuing contest over the performance space of the state. This contest, while aimed at the groups of interested watchers outside the gates - Amnesty International, International Pen, and other human rights groups - is ultimately aimed at the real audience: the people waiting in the territorial space. The state is trying to direct the drama of the prisoner’s self-condemnation … The artist prisoner resists in every fibre of his being displaying ‘the placard of selfcondemnation,’ … This contest over the prison performance space of the state is also a means of resistance, a means of staying alive in this torture-chamber of the spirit. It is, in other words, one of the ways of denying the state a triumphant epilogue to its performance. The kind of prison narrative which Ngugi discusses tells a story which dialogically engages the state’s monologic narrative and, in the process, challenges the state’s efforts to impose restrictions on expression and to silence such oppositional stories. In A Month and a Day: A Detention Diary, Saro- Wiwa explicitly makes use of the relationship between these two aspects of the genre, and turns his detention to his rhetorical advantage, by emphasizing the link between the struggle for civil liberties and his other causes: the plight of the Ogoni, the fight for minority rights in Nigeria more generally, and issues of environmental justice. 7 7 A Month and a Day is a prison narrative in a double sense, since it was rewritten during the detention which eventually led to Saro-Wiwa’s execution. In the “Preface” he writes, “Given the fact that I am not certain what the immediate future may bring, I have thought it wise to get my original draft published and have therefore smuggled it into my detention cell and am correcting and redrafting it in very difficult circumstances” (1). 302 B YRON C AMINERO -S ANTANGELO In fact, Saro-Wiwa creates a necessary link between the fight for civil liberties in Nigeria and his other causes; this fight, he suggests, will gain wide popular attention and appeal only in the wake of struggles for social justice. He notes, for example, that only when the Ogoni developed a sense of communal grievance and began to protest did they become aware of the suppression of civil liberties in Nigeria and of its significance: Since our denigration as a people was unprotested, no one had ever been held on his conscience. So that the fact that an innocent man could be sent to prison was unthinkable. It is true that we had read of the detention of people in Nigeria, but it was mostly a phenomenon of Lagos, where there were several human rights activists. That was until I told the Ogoni people that they were being cheated, denied of their rights to a healthy environment, and the resources of their land. Then almost the entire 51,000 Ogoni men, women and children became activists. Still, prison seemed far away … . And yet I do remember that I kept warning the Ogoni people to prepare for harassment, imprisonment and death. Altogether, it was fitting that I should be one of the first to be detained. It would show subsequent detainees that they were in good company. (223-4) Advanced through forms of banned speech and political action, the Ogonis’ struggle necessarily results in greater awareness of issues of civil rights and liberties and, de facto, becomes a fight for civil liberties. This point gives some weight to Saro-Wiwa’s claim that in Africa the fight for minority rights will bring in its wake democratic change and increased respect for liberal values: “Would the Ogoni revolution be a model for other small, deprived, dispossessed and disappearing peoples? … A large number of communities ready to take their fate into their hands and practice self-reliance, demanding their rights non-violently, would conduce to democracy and more politically developed peoples” (134). Yet, though Saro-Wiwa effectively linked the issue of civil liberties with his other causes both in his writing and in his role as political martyr, there are questions and tensions which remain unaddressed. Perhaps most importantly, one cannot assume that the fight for minority rights would automatically result in an increase in civil liberties and rights at the local level. As I indicate above, the argument that, in the context of Nigerian national politics, the struggle for minority rights will by necessity be a struggle for civil liberties is compelling. However, would the achievement of increased autonomy necessarily result in an Ogoni state respectful of civil liberties? Would minority or opposition voices among the Ogoni themselves be silenced in the name of Ogoni unity and identity? Will Kymlicka’s discussion in Multicultural Citizenship concerning the possible tensions between (collective) minority rights and individual civil liberties is useful here. Kymlicka primarily argues that the traditional liberal Of Freedom and Oil … 303 position on individual rights must be brought together with a notion of collective rights in order to arrive at a more comprehensive liberal vision of social justice. Discussing how national and ethnic minorities remain vulnerable to the majority (even in a democratic system) when it comes to questions involving national language, education, control of resources, and assimilation, Kymlicka notes, “the problem is not that traditional human rights doctrines give us the wrong answer to these questions. It is rather that they often give no answer at all … These questions have been left to the usual process of majoritarian decision-making within each state. The result … has been to render cultural minorities vulnerable to significant injustice at the hands of the majority” (5). He concludes that “to resolve these questions fairly, we need to supplement traditional human rights principles with a theory of minority rights.” Yet, Kymlicka notes, minority rights can clash with individual civil liberties when the former refers “to the right of a group to limit the liberty of its own individual members” and, particularly, when it enables “the suppression of dissenters within the group” (6-7). As a result, he distinguishes between two meanings of minority rights. One involves the right to impose “internal restrictions,” which involve the limitations to individual liberties described above. The other involves what he calls “external protections,” which involves “the right of a group to limit the economic or political power exercised by the larger society over the group.” Kymlicka argues that the latter are often consistent with a liberal vision of individual liberties, while the former are not. However, as he also recognizes, even “laws that are justified in terms of external protection can open the door to internal restrictions” (43). While Saro-Wiwa was clearly focused on the issue of “external protections” for the Ogoni, he did not address the potential threat of “internal restrictions” if increased autonomy for the Ogoni were achieved. Furthermore, there is some cause to be concerned that the political culture of Nigeria would endanger civil liberties and rights even in a semiautonomous Ogoni state. The case of the killing of the four Ogoni chiefs by a mob, for which Saro-Wiwa was executed, might be instructive in this regard. Ato Quayson has perceptively argued that the root cause for these murders was the culture of violence, distrust, and impunity instilled throughout Nigeria by corrupt, vicious military regimes. 8 In Nigeria, those in 8 Quayson writes that totalitarian regimes in Africa which are focused on showing the people their unrestrained power result in “what we might describe as ‘cultures of impunity.’ … A minor traffic infringement may cause a person instant and violent retribution from bystanders. To fall in love with the wrong woman may invite physical mishaps of unimaginable sorts. An altercation in a shop may lead to assault and so on. The worrying thing is that this culture of impunity often marks all levels of civic society and polity, from the excesses of totalitarian regimes, to the banality of policing, right down to the breakdown of civil address between neighbors” (73). 304 B YRON C AMINERO -S ANTANGELO positions of power were so regularly bribed into supporting the status quo that to be perceived as speaking out in favor of the “official” position (as were the four chiefs) was to be marked as a traitor. In turn, the lesson instilled by Nigerian governance and society was that violence was the means with which to deal with those deemed to oppose you. Basically, Quayson argues, Saro-Wiwa did not perceive the effect that the larger political culture of Nigeria would have on his message and on those who followed him: “he motivated popular forces that began to articulate their perception of political action partially from within the ethical framework provided by the system of patronage and violence in place in Nigeria. Obviously, in his absence the masses deployed the means of understanding politics that was discursively instituted in Nigerian politics itself” (73). Clearly a similar situation could arise in a semi-autonomous Ogoni state; such a state would not necessarily be immune from the violent, anti-democratic culture instilled by decades of misrule in Nigeria. As I pointed out earlier, Saro-Wiwa endorses Fanon’s insight in “Pitfall of National Culture” that the “battle against colonialism does not run straight away along the lines of nationalism” (148) - i.e. that the goal of national independence was not necessarily identical with the goal of dismantling an unequal, exploitative colonial system and culture because these could live on, albeit in new forms, with new players in old roles. What he did not, perhaps, consider was that the goal of increased ethnic federalism (increased rule of Ogoni by Ogoni) is not necessarily identical with the goal of increased civil liberties, civil rights, and democracy, especially given the mindset encouraged by Nigerian socio-political culture. Another potential set of questions results from the linking of environmental protection and civil liberties. 9 The two concerns are clearly inseparable in a situation in which the degradation of a minority group’s environment for the benefit of the state and international capital depends on the silencing of that group and the denial of their right to determine the use of their land. The situation might become trickier, however, if the Ogoni were to achieve more autonomy. At that point, one of Saro-Wiwa’s goals, “the right to the control and use of a fair proportion of Ogoni economic resources for Ogoni development” in part by entering into contracts with oil companies, would need to be balanced with another, the protection of the Ogoni environment. This balancing clearly would entail determining what “sustainable progress” might mean. A liberal perspective, focused on the issue of “freedoms,” will necessarily be concerned that government institutions enable debate and discussion rather than dictate policy. Yet, 9 For a good overview of the possible relationships and tensions between liberalism and various environmentalist visions, see Andrew Dobson, 163-72. Of Freedom and Oil … 305 determining a definition of environmental sustainability through this process will by no means necessarily result in a decrease in environmental degradation necessary to save the Ogoni environment. In a hypothetical scenario, a majority of voices could be more focused on concerns with compensation and the development of Ogoni infrastructure and amenities and could give a backseat to environmental protection. Moreover, there might well be conflict between the goal of environmental preservation and the freedom of individual landholders to make decisions about the use of their land and to reap the benefits of their property. In a well-known argument regarding “the tragedy of the commons,” Garrett Hardin claims that unregulated communally held natural resources will eventually lead to ruin because people’s focus on their individual interests will come into conflict with the collective good.. He uses pollution - i.e. the commons as a place of waste disposal - as one example of this “tragedy.” To ensure environmental protection, he claims, there needs to be some form of governmental coercion and some curtailment of individual liberties. Thus, to prevent further catastrophic destruction of the Ogoni’s (common) environment, a semi-autonomous Ogoni state might need to regulate the kinds of agreements individuals could enter into with oil companies, which could, in turn, involve the potential curtailment of civil liberties. As Hardin notes, “every new enclosure of the commons involves the infringement of somebody’s personal liberty” (1248). 10 10 There have been numerous criticisms of Hardin’s argument, among the most compelling of which is that Hardin confused common property with open access. By doing so, he ignored the ways that regulation of “the commons” could be achieved by local indigenous institutions which would ensure that resources be managed sustainably and enable the “commons” to be compatible with long-term communal interest. As a result of this aspect of Hardin’s argument, it has all too easily lent itself to capitalist and imperial development narratives. (For the problems with Hardin’s argument in relation to Africa, see: Brockington and Homewood; Leach and Mearns, “Environmental.”) While these arguments are compelling and have necessitated a response from Hardin (see “Extensions of ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’”), they do not necessarily undermine the relevance of his argument in this particular situation. Traditional means of regulating the commons have already been undermined by the intervention of the Nigerian government and international oil. Furthermore, transformations of traditional ethics and social regulation have clearly resulted from the impact of colonial/ postcolonial modernity and the forms of capitalist ideology which have been brought in its wake. Finally, and perhaps most importantly given my argument, traditional means of regulating the commons would not necessarily be inconsistent with the kinds of curtailments of individual freedoms to which Hardin refers. 306 B YRON C AMINERO -S ANTANGELO In a number of ways, my outlining of the possible tensions between Saro-Wiwa’s other concerns and civil liberties may seem to be ignoring the larger picture. For example, since the astronomical level of environmental degradation of Ogoniland brought about by the combined external forces of the Nigerian government and international oil (both clearly indifferent to the fate of the Ogoni), it can surely be assumed that increased freedoms for the Ogoni could only lead to an improved environment and more environmental safeguards. Yet, the history of much of post-independence Africa has suggested the need to think not only about the connections but also the disjunctions among different political goals - disjunctions ignored at some peril. Saro-Wiwa was well aware, for example, that increased “democracy” would not automatically bring in its wake increased minority rights. His narrative of Ogoni history since independence emphasizes that even during periods of democratic rule, the Ogoni remained oppressed. This oppression can be addressed only if there is an attempt to change the structure of Nigeria itself so that minority voices and interests cannot be drowned at the federal level. (In this sense, Saro-Wiwa’s position corresponds closely with Kymlicka’s argument, discussed above, concerning the need to supplement traditional liberal principles with a theory of minority rights.) Sadly, the history of the Ogoni since Saro-Wiwa’s death supports this perspective. After the death of Abacha in 1998, Olusegun Obasanjo was elected president in 1999 after 16 years of military dictatorship. However, although Shell suspended exploration activities in 1993, its oil lines still cover Ogoniland and result in regular spills, as do abandoned oil wells which have not been properly sealed. Furthermore, there has been no compensation for past oil extraction or for past and present environmental degradation. The Ogoni still live amidst the most abysmal conditions, and their interests remain marginalized by Nigerian politics. The point is that there is a need to continue Saro-Wiwa’s work not only by fighting for the causes he has come to represent, but also by continuing to articulate and to think through the relationships among those causes. Ato Quayson has represented Saro-Wiwa as a tragic hero in that the clarity of his “ethical position against a totalitarian state and multinational interests” was “joined to the compromising circumstances of an unideal and sullied national history that defines his tragedy … Saro Wiwa is a tragic hero because he committed himself to his people but could not possibly have controlled all the forces he unleashed” (74). This argument is important for two reasons. On the one hand, it points to the need to revisit Saro-Wiwa’s stories (both the stories he told and the story of his martyrdom) in order to revitalize the “the process of challenging the dominant structural and discursive relations begun by the tragic hero” (Quayson 74). On the other hand, it points to the need to continue to leave the formulation of that pro- Of Freedom and Oil … 307 cess open: to think about how to address the gaps and potential blindspots in earlier formulations and representations as the struggle continues. 11 To see Ken Saro-Wiwa as a beginning rather than an ending is, perhaps, the best way to keep his legacy alive. 11 Craig McLuckie’s argument concerning the form of A Month and Day is interesting in this regard. McLuckie claims that Saro-Wiwa’s “diary” is “fragmented,” for example in its “conflation of discursive types” (the memoir, the diary, and the notebook). Drawing on Edward Said, he argues that this fragmentation, by refusing complete representation, challenges the establishment of fixed, final truths and points to the incomplete nature of the Ogoni’s struggle: “An unfinished, unpolished text is a testament finally to the greater work in process” (49). 308 B YRON C AMINERO -S ANTANGELO Works Cited Bastion, Misty L. “‘Buried Beneath Six Feet of Crude Oil’: State-Sponsored Death and the Absent Body of Ken Saro-Wiwa.” McLuckie and McPhail, 127-152. Brockington, Daniel and Katherine Homewood. “Wildlife, Pastoralists & Science.” Leach and Mearns, The Lie of the Land. 91-104. Dobson, Andrew. Green Political Thought. New York: Routledge, 2000. Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove, 1963. Hammer, Joshua. “Nigeria Crude: A Hanged Man and an Oil-Fouled Landscape.” Harpers 292. 1753 (1996). 58-70. 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