The rest of the world agreed. South African President Nelson Mandela called the hangings “a heinous act,” British Prime Minister John Major termed them “judicial murder” and the White House condemned the “flouting of even the most basic international norms and universal standards of human rights.” Several countries, including the United States and many Western European nations, withdrew their ambassadors. The World Bank canceled its support for a $100 million loan for a liquefied-natural-gas project. But the Nigerian junta seemed impervious to the outrage. Foreign Minister Tom Ikimi dismissed Saro-Wiwa as a “brutal murderer,” and a Nigerian representative at the United Nations chastised the West for “gross interference in our internal affairs.”
Nigeria’s military strongmen have been trying for five years to get rid of their most articulate and nettlesome critic. As the founder of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, Saro-Wiwa led a grass-roots campaign for minority rights in Ogoniland, a 350-square-mile slice of the Niger delta where most of the country’s off is produced–at heavy cost to the environment. In March 1998 the Shell Petroleum Development Corp., Saro-Wiwa’s main target, withdrew from Ogoni-land following sabotage of its pipelines. The pullout cost the off company and the government 28,000 barrels a day. After four pro-government tribal chiefs were burned alive by an angry mob of Saro-Wiwa supporters in May 1994, the army accused the Ogoni leader of inciting the killings. At his nine-month stooge trial, half a dozen prosecution witnesses admitted they had been bribed, and Saro-Wiwa’s entire defense team resigned after continual harassment. Saro-Wiwa, who had carefully professed nonviolence throughout his career, manifested his contempt for the military proceedings by keeping his face buried in a book. “The prosecutor’s case would not hold water even before the corrupt normal courts of Nigeria,” Saro-Wiwa wrote in his letter.
Saro-Wiwa’s execution reflects a growing bunker mentality among Nigeria’s ruling generals. Their leader, Gen. Sani Abacha, has become increasingly reclusive in recent months, venturing out of the presidential mansion only in the company of armed escorts and rarely traveling abroad. Last month Abacha commuted the death sentences of 15 military officers convicted of treason in an alleged coup plot. Diplomats say that hard-liners in the Provisional Ruling Council, the country’s ruling body, were outraged by his leniency. Back then Abacha was apparently worried about what the outside world would think. But clearly, when it came to Saro-Wiwa, he didn’t worry enough.
