Of all the casualties of the unholy post-war alliance between the Nigerian military state and big oil, the Ogoni people were arguably amongst the worst hit. With the full blessing of the Nigerian government, the Royal Dutch Shell oil company was authorised to explore and extract oil from Ogoniland. While this was a win-win deal for Nigeria’s military generals and the oil giant, Shell’s entry into the region quickly became nothing short of a living nightmare for the Ogoni people.
Having grown sick and tired of the military government’s complicity in the devastation of his ancestral land, Ken Saro-Wiwa spearheaded the creation of a pressure group known as the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (popularly known as MOSOP). This is the story of the most prominent martyr in the fight against big oil in Nigeria.
