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Nigeria and Saro-Wiwa’s World to 1960

Kenule Saro-Wiwa’s story is intertwined with the story of the country Lord Lugard created in 1914 when he unified Nigeria into one political entity. Saro-Wiwa’s relationship with Nigeria defined much of his life, and his attempts to reform it led to his death. In fact, his life, work, and literary career were largely shaped by the same forces that created the colonial state of Nigeria and shaped the legacy that independent Nigeria inherited on October 1, 1960.

The Ogoni, one of the smallest ethnic groups within Nigeria, struggled throughout the colonial period to achieve official recognition and the government protection and funding that came with it. The Ogoni, like many minorities in Nigeria, faced a long history of oppression and domination by the three largest ethnic groups: the Hausa-Fulani in the north, the Yoruba in the southwest, and the Igbo, who dominated the southeast, where the Ogoni lived.¹ Saro-Wiwa viewed his own life as entwined in this struggle and sought to use his position and influence to help achieve an inclusive Nigerian national identity. In many of his works, most notably his Nigerian Civil War memoir On a Darkling Plain and his various activist writings in the early 1990s, he is acutely aware of his predecessors and his place within these struggles.

The Ogoni are one of the smallest ethnic and linguistic groups in Nigeria, residing directly east of Port Harcourt along the eastern edge of the Niger Delta, with a population of roughly half a million. They are made up of several subgroups, each with its own identity, history, and distinct dialect. In fact, like most ethnicities in Nigeria, Ogoni identity has historically been fluid, with groups aligning with and dissociating themselves from the Ogoni, according to constantly shifting political considerations within Nigeria. Traditionally a riverine agrarian people, their economic mainstays are aquatic agricultural production, animal husbandry, and fisheries in the Niger Delta. In fact, the Ogoni live in such close relationship to their land that there is no distinction in the Ogoni language between the name for the people and the name for the land,² as Saro-Wiwa was fond of pointing out.

Ogoni origins are contested, both with regard to the oral traditions and with regard to linguistic and archaeological evidence. Moreover, the different groups composing the Ogoni have historically acknowledged little mutual identity, despite common linguistic and cultural practices. Some scholars, such as the late linguist Kay Williamson, rely on oral traditions and linguistic analysis to suggest that the Ogoni migrated to their present location from the Kingdom of Ghana over one thousand years ago. Others cite a combination of migration and absorption patterns with local communities as the origin of the Ogoni people. However, their incorporation into the broader Nigerian colonial state forced the Ogoni to organize into a political unity, despite the fact that some Ogoni groups had long rejected the idea of a pan-Ogoni identity.³

For Saro-Wiwa, British rule in southern Nigeria, which formally began in 1900 and ended in 1960, ushered in a new phase in interethnic relations. British rule concentrated power over the country and its resources along ethnic lines; it created a system that encouraged resource exploitation, and ethnicity became the de facto mode for political organization. This system, which the British called “indirect rule,” gave rise to a struggle for access to the mechanisms determining political culture after independence. Saro-Wiwa decried this system, not only because it shaped the ethnically fractured structure of postcolonial Nigeria, but more importantly, because it gave rise to a system of exploitation that he called “indigenous imperialism.”

Although the British did not invent ethnic and political conflict in Nigeria, they created a system in which the only legitimate access to resources and the mechanisms of distribution was organized along ethnic lines. In his civil war memoir Saro-Wiwa lambasted the Igbo for denouncing this system for marginalizing them at the national level but failing to acknowledge that the same system allowed them to dominate political institutions in the southeast of the country at the expense of the smaller groups whom they shut out of government appointments and contracts.

From the establishment of colonial rule in Nigeria at the end of the nineteenth century until 1914, the British created several protectorates, which eventually coalesced into the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria and the Colony and the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria. As with most colonial possessions, the British administered the protectorates through a system of local rulers, known collectively as “indirect rule,” as mentioned earlier. In the Northern Nigeria Protectorate, the British relied heavily on established local rulers, usually emirs remaining from precolonial times, to administer the protectorate and collect taxes. In the much more politically diverse Southern Protectorate, many differing local administrations emerged, owing to British recognition of the multiplicity of precolonial political systems. The British colonial administration co-opted those systems as important mechanisms in colonial administration. However, some aspects of precolonial rule, especially revenue collection systems, were incompatible with the new system of government.

A major change that the British enacted in both Northern and Southern Nigeria was to shift the tax collection system to one that required payment in coin and paper, namely, the British pound. This change required a retooling of local economies that had for centuries accepted payment either in specie or in commodities. The Protectorate of Southern Nigeria was better suited to this new system because many parts of the region had well-established import/export economies that replaced the slave trade in the early nineteenth century. Further, alcohol sale in the south provided a ready tax base and served as one of the major revenue generators for the colonial administration in Southern Nigeria, whereas strict religious laws in the predominantly Muslim north forbade the sale and consumption of alcohol. As a result, Northern Nigeria hemorrhaged money because the tax collection system did not generate the necessary revenues to finance the colonial government. By 1912, Northern Nigeria was heavily dependent on subsidies, both from the southern protectorate and an annual allocation of GBP 300,000 from the Colonial Office.

Sir Frederick Lugard (later Lord), who previously served as high commissioner of Northern Nigeria, was recalled to the country from his post as the governor of Hong Kong in 1912 to facilitate the unification of Northern and Southern Nigeria into one administrative unit. The main goals of Nigerian unification were economic in nature. First and foremost, Lugard needed to stabilize the finances of the Northern Protectorate and allow for easier transfer of funds between the different regions of the country. Second, Lugard was to create a unified bureaucracy to make administering Nigeria more cost-effective and efficient.

Lugard articulated British policy toward Nigeria in a book called The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa. In it, he outlined the idea of indirect rule and the creation of native institutions. Lugard envisioned a system whereby the colonial administration would serve British interests while working in the best interests of the colonized people. In particular, Lugard encouraged local control over taxation and expenditures and discouraged British officials from interfering in local affairs. In Northern Nigeria, where Lugard had previously served as high commissioner, he maintained most of the tax collection system prevalent before British rule. The emir collected the taxes, paid his officials, and financed other projects from a “native treasury” created for this purpose. This system worked because of a long history of centralized rule and taxation in the precolonial states, especially the powerful Sokoto Caliphate. In the south, there was little history of direct taxation. State revenue extraction took the form of customs duties, court fees and fines, and other administrative fees and duties, such as the aforementioned tax on alcohol sales. These policies made revenue allocation in the south a colonial creation, whereas in the north, the colonial administration superimposed itself on an existing taxation system. Finally, Lugard separated colonial administration from the “native treasuries” and required that all local administrative salaries come exclusively from local revenue collection; they could not be supplemented by outside funds.

Despite pretensions of allowing native rulers to administer their own populations, local rulers were little more than unofficial colonial agents, lacking autonomy and political clout. Further, Lugard homogenized the multiple administrative systems in the south, which he dismissed as chaotic and wasteful, but the reorganizaton resulted in increased marginalization of smaller ethnic groups. Most damaging, Lugard created a new type of indigenous ruler in the southern region modeled on the northern emir. This departure from the existing heterogeneity in southern Nigeria created a new class of rulers and bestowed on them powers that few rulers in the south had traditionally possessed. In effect, Lugard created a new class of native colonial administrators who owed their allegiance to their respective ethnic groups but derived their power, not from traditional roles, but from new roles acquired from the British administration. The three major ethnic groups, namely, the Hausa-Fulani in the north, the Yoruba in the southwest, and the Igbo in the southeast, used the new colonial administration to consolidate their power and create a new colonial patronage system that benefited their own groups at the expense of the many minority ethnic groups in the country, including Saro-Wiwa’s Ogoni.

Despite the lack of shared identity as Ogoni before British colonial occupation, British administrators recognized the various Ogoni groups as a distinct “tribe.” In 1932, most Ogoni-speaking areas were amalgamated into what the British determined as the Ogoni “tribe,” with various subgroups referred to as “clans.” In reality, no stable affiliations of this kind existed; for example, one group related to the Ogoni, the Eleme, petitioned the British to be included as part of the Ogoni, but in later years dissociated themselves from the Ogoni. This ethnic and linguistic grouping of peoples into political units was not unique to the Ogoni, however, and in the aftermath of unification, many smaller ethnic groups realized that strength in numbers was the only way to secure their collective rights. Other new ethnopolitical groups coalesced, especially in the diverse Niger Delta region, with the Ijo and the Andoni securing similar recognition from the British authorities. Larger groups in Nigeria were not immune to this consolidation of political power along similar lines. Under British rule, the Yoruba in the southwest of Nigeria transformed from a patchwork of opposing kingdoms and city-states into a major unified force in Nigerian politics, both during colonial rule and after. Similarly, the Igbo, largely recognized as a stateless society, merged into a political force that attempted to secede from Nigeria and form the Republic of Biafra in 1967, sparking a three-year civil war.

For the Ogoni, the need for political influence became increasingly important. In 1945, as various ethnic groups merged and new ethnic identifications surfaced, the Ogoni created the Ogoni Central Union (OCU). Led by Paul Birabi, the first Ogoni university graduate, the OCU agitated for an official Ogoni administrative division. After attaining this in 1947 with the creation of an Ogoni division within what was at the time the Rivers Province, Birabi and the OCU fought for increased access to colonial funds.

The 1950s proved especially troublesome for the Ogoni. As British rule neared its end, the colonial government ceded more and more authority to the native administrations, dominated by Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa elites. In 1954, the British codified the three major ethnic divisions by splitting the country into three regions, each dominated by one of the major ethnic groups. Birabi pushed for increased Ogoni participation in the new Eastern Region, which, though dominated by the Igbo, was also the most ethnically diverse and densely populated of the three regions. The OCU succeeded in obtaining some funding, especially for access to government-sponsored education for Ogoni youth. Saro-Wiwa, who enrolled at the Government College Umuahia in 1954 at age thirteen, was one of the early beneficiaries of this program.

In the mid- to late 1950s, as Nigeria edged closer to independence, political rivalries born under the colonial administration intensified. The three largest political groups, the Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba, and Igbo, were set to dominate the political arena in the emerging state. This reality, codified by the regional boundaries the British imposed in 1954, led to increased protests among the smaller groups in the country, including the Ogoni. In an attempt to allay minority fears, the British convened a commission headed by Sir Henry Willink in 1957, intending to create safeguards ensuring minority rights in independent Nigeria. Many of the minorities, such as the Ijo, Ibibio, and, most prominently, the minorities in the Western Region agitated for political separation from the “big three” groups as the only way to safeguard their rights from regional ethnic domination. The commission ultimately decided that “although there remained a Body of genuine fears and the future was regarded with real apprehension . . . a separate state would not provide a remedy for the fears expressed.”⁴ Rather, the commission suggested that the major issues facing the minorities would be better served by handling their concerns at the federal level.

The commission determined that regionalism in Nigeria would do little but destabilize the country and that constitutional safeguards specifically protecting minority rights at the national level would be the best guarantee of these liberties. Thus, despite the protestations of many minority groups testifying before the commission and who saw that a federal solution would be the best guarantor of minority rights, the commission found that these rights would best be secured by a system created for, and dominated by, the three major groups.

Minority fears of domination echoed Saro-Wiwa’s own fears. In fact, during the Nigerian Civil War he actively supported the Nigerian state, stating that “the true interest of [the ethnic minorities in Nigeria] lay in a more equitable country where all groups would be fairly treated, where all groups had self-determination. Biafra was not that country.”⁵ However, his views echoed those expressed in the Minorities Commission Report, especially regarding Ogoni domination by the larger ethnic political groups in the country. For him, as it was for many in Nigeria, this was not merely domination, but a form of imperialism, virtually indistinguishable from the British variety in its domination and oppression of minority rights.

The 1950s also saw one of the most important developments for the future of Nigeria: the discovery of rich petroleum deposits in the Niger Delta. This discovery proved disastrous for the Ogoni. In 1956, Shell-BP discovered oil in the town of Oloibiri, in the southern Niger Delta near the town of Brass. In 1958, the first commercial drilling began. This quickly transformed the Niger Delta and the Nigerian economy as a whole. The oil revenue came under the control of the ruling elites. As government revenues came to depend almost exclusively on the petroleum sector, the Niger Delta, including Ogoni lands, became the main source of government funds, effectively subsidizing the Nigerian government and, unofficially, its corrupt officials before and especially after independence. Though oil exploitation and the destruction of the Ogoni environment are discussed in a separate chapter, the colonial government system that continued into independence ensured that the Ogoni, and most of the other ethnicities in Nigeria, saw their lands and the profits from those lands redistributed among the powerful elites that controlled the country.

When Lord Lugard orchestrated Nigeria’s unification in 1912–14, he sought to create a more efficient, economically unified political entity. Lugard began a process, continued by subsequent British administrators, which transformed the Nigerian economy and the relations among its various societies. When Nigeria became independent on October 1, 1960, tensions within the country intensified as competing groups already vying for a stake in the British colonial system fought for control and influence over a diverse, resource-rich state struggling to transform itself into a self-sufficient nation.

In the early years of Nigerian independence, the country lurched from crisis to crisis as the pains of a political system built on ethnic sectionalism and mistrust overshadowed the euphoria of liberation from British colonial rule. Almost immediately after independence, the drive for the federalization of the country was renewed, culminating in 1963 with the creation of the Midwestern Region.

Map 1.1 Nigeria to 1967

The creation of the new region did little to alleviate ethnic or religious tension in the country. In 1962, the Nigerian government undertook a census to determine, among other things, parliamentary seat allocation in anticipation of the 1963 general election. In the previous elections, held in 1959, the Northern People’s Congress (NPC) won 134 of the 314 seats in the House of Representatives, despite winning only 28.2 percent of the vote. The predominantly southern coalition, National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC), won 36.1 percent of the vote, but because of parliamentary allocation, secured only 89 seats. A predominantly western coalition, the Action Group (AG), won 27.6 percent of the vote but secured only 73 seats due to the same electoral system. This political system, which so heavily favored the Northern Region, meant that southerners found the temptation irresistible to remedy this inequity with creative census procedures.⁶ Initial census figures released in May 1963 showed that the Western and Eastern regions’ populations increased by 70 percent in the decade since the 1953 census. The Northern Region’s population grew by only 30 percent in the same period. As a result, the NPC government ordered a second census to be taken, where the population numbers in the north were adjusted to meet the reported growth in the south, thus maintaining the status quo in parliament.

Both the 1964 general election and the 1965 Western Region election were as corrupt as the census. In order to wrest control from the NPC, the AG and NCNC united with smaller parties from the north to form a new coalition called the United Progressive Grand Alliance (UPGA). Some in the southern parties, led by the unpopular Western Region premier, Samuel Akintola, feared a UPGA victory. Akintola formed a new southern party called the Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP) and united with the NPC to form the Nigerian National Alliance (NNA). UPGA activists were arrested en masse in the north; in one case in Kano 297 UPGA campaigners were detained, with some held until after the elections and others released and ordered to return to their homes in the south. UPGA candidates were denied access to the ballots, resulting in 50.57 percent of the Northern Region seats going unopposed to NNA candidates. As a result of these tactics, the NCNC boycotted the elections and only agreed to contest them on March 18, 1965, after NCNC leader Nnamdi Azikiwe secured concessions from the NPC head and the prime minister, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa.

These tactics eroded Nigerians’ faith in the electoral system. The next election, in the Western Region, further reinforced this distrust. Akintola’s NNDP vowed to win the election by any means necessary. According to Saro-Wiwa, “NNDP politicians threatened to win, whether the electorate voted or not. And win they did! In some cases, the results were declared before the ballot boxes were opened!”⁷ The NNDP engaged in massive electoral rigging, and infighting among the AG and NCNC resulted in candidates from these parties running against each other, splitting the vote and ensuring NNDP victories. When results were announced, both sides declared victory, resulting in widespread violence that amounted to a veritable civil war within the Western Region.

Like most in Nigeria’s early years of independence, Saro-Wiwa grew to detest the political structure revolving around the large ethnic groups and centering on a north-south divide. This divide naturally focused on the large ethnic groups and the power dynamics between them, while minorities like Saro-Wiwa’s Ogoni were excluded.

It was into this political, social, and cultural maelstrom that Kenule Saro-Wiwa was born on October 10, 1941.