Ken Saro-Wiwa, Wole Soyinka, Paul Robeson & Christopher Okigbo

Legends of the motherland!

Ken Saro-Wiwa (1941-1995)

Saro-Wiwa was born to one of the Nigerian tribes, Ogoni, in 1941, and at the age of 13 won a scholarship to Government College in Umuahia. After the graduation from the University of Ibadan, he worked at the jobs which the Nigerian Government provided. When the Biafran civil war broke out, he was one of the few Ogoni intellectuals to side with the Nigerian government, believing that the Ogonis had better prospects within Nigerian than in Igbo-dominated Biafra. This became very controversial. When he was appointed to be a regional commissioner for education, his prospect became one of the impediments for the Government to gain the control over the Ogonis people. Since his attitude failed to meet government’s expectation, he was more and more actively engaged in campaigning for the rights of the Ogoni people to stop the government from agreeing the Shell to exploit their natural…