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
