The Ogoni Nine

From 1990, Ken Saro-Wiwa — writer, television producer and founder of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) — led a sustained non-violent campaign against the environmental devastation of Ogoniland by Shell Petroleum Development Company and the Nigerian state's failure to share oil revenue with the Ogoni communities from whose territory it was extracted. After the killing in May 1994 of four pro-government Ogoni chiefs at a meeting at Giokoo, Saro-Wiwa and eight MOSOP colleagues — Saturday Dobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel Gbooko, Paul Levera, Felix Nuate, Baribor Bera, Barinem Kiobel and John Kpuine — were arrested and charged with incitement to murder. A military-appointed tribunal convicted all nine in October 1995 in proceedings condemned internationally as fundamentally unfair. They were hanged at Port Harcourt Prison on 10 November 1995. The Commonwealth suspended Nigeria two days later; the suspension lasted until 1999. The Wiwa v Shell litigation in the United States was settled in 2009; the Bodo case in the UK High Court produced a Shell settlement in 2015. The Ogoni Nine remain the most internationally recognised victims of Abacha-era state violence.