Nigeria: Ken Saro-Wiwa’s fight against pollution lives on
The late Nigerian writer and teacher Ken Saro-Wiwa put the disastrous oil extraction in the Niger Delta on the international agenda and dispelled the notion that oil would bring prosperity to Nigeria.
“If we had a proper system, they would find that there is not so much oil money around anyway,” Saro-Wiwa told DW in November 1993.
“Oil is causing a lot of devastation, which the country has not paid for and which it will pay for in due course. So people should go and look for other sources of sustenance instead of eyeing oil,” he said.
A few days later, General Sani Abacha established a brutal dictatorship in Nigeria. Two years after that, Saro-Wiwa — along with eight other activists, known as the “Ogoni 9” — was dead.
