Civil society organisations on Monday in Lagos called on the federal government to exonerate Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists executed in 1995, while also demanding a $1 trillion commitment to clean up Ogoniland and other polluted communities in the Niger Delta.
The groups made the call during the Environmental Rights Collective for Social and Intergenerational Mobilisation (ERECTISM) symposium, organised by the Health of Mother Earth Foundation (HOMEF) in collaboration with 10 organisations, including the Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN) and Kebetkache Women Development & Resource Centre.
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Others are Oilwatch International, Social Action, Miideekor Environmental Development Initiative, We The People, Lekeh Development Foundation, CAPPA, and the Human and Environmental Development Agenda (HEDA Resource Centre).
In his opening remark, Nnimmo Bassey, director of HOMEF, said the executions of Mr Saro-Wiwa and his colleagues were “judicial murders” and that the government’s current talk of pardons was misplaced.
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“What Ken Saro-Wiwa and the others deserve is not a pardon,” he said. “They deserve exoneration, because they committed no crime. Exoneration is the only way to clear their names and address the injustice done to them.”
Mr Bassey said the Niger Delta continues to suffer from oil pollution, and urged President Bola Tinubu’s administration to go beyond symbolic gestures to real justice.
Tinubu’s pardon plan and national honours
Mr Saro-Wiwa, a Nigerian writer and environmental activist, was sentenced to death in 1995 by a special military tribunal under General Sani Abacha’s regime.
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His sentencing followed accusations that he had incited the murder of four Ogoni chiefs—charges widely believed to be politically motivated and lacking credible evidence.
In his Democracy Day broadcast on 12 June, President Tinubu announced plans to pardon the Ogoni Nine, saying the gesture would help heal old wounds.
He also indicated that Mr Saro-Wiwa and his colleagues might receive national honours.
But activists at Monday’s meeting described the plan as “hollow,” arguing that a pardon suggests wrongdoing while exoneration affirms innocence.
Mr Saro-Wiwa’s family had rejected a similar offer of pardon during the Buhari administration, insisting on full exoneration.
“The family has been consistent,” Mr Bassey said. “They have said over and over that what they want is not pardon but exoneration. Anything short of that is an insult to their memory.”
Injustice persists
Sections of the coalition’s statement was read in turns by Niger Delta activist Celestine Akpobari; Akinbode Oluwafemi, Executive Director of CAPPA; Prince Edegbuo, Resources Justice Manager at Social Action; and Kentebe Ebiaridor of Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN), stressing that nearly three decades after Mr Saro-Wiwa’s death, Ogoniland, remains severely polluted.
The speakers said rivers are contaminated, farmlands are unproductive, and gas flaring continues to expose residents to toxic emissions.
They also stated that life expectancy in the Niger Delta, remains low, while oil corporations “enrich themselves with resources that keep the people below the poverty line.”
Mr Bassey reminded the audience of Mr Saro-Wiwa’s ideology of “ERECTISM,” which emphasised ethnic autonomy, resource control, environmental justice, and sustainable development.
“His peaceful resistance was criminalised, and he was killed, but his ideas continue to inspire global struggles for justice,” he said.
Key demands
The coalition demanded that the Nigerian government formally exonerate Mr Saro-Wiwa and the other Ogoni leaders instead of merely issuing a pardon that suggests guilt.
They also called for a comprehensive clean-up of Ogoniland and the wider Niger Delta, insisting that the process must be scientific, transparent, and independently monitored, with local communities actively involved in both planning and execution.
The groups argued that the scale of devastation in the Niger Delta justifies their $1 trillion demand. They pointed to international precedents, such as the $3.625 million settlement reached in the United States in 2018 after Shell’s Green Canyon oil spill discharged 1,926 barrels of crude into the Gulf of Mexico.
They argued that a relatively small spill prompted the U.S. Department of Justice and environmental agencies to channel funds into oyster restoration, marine mammal health monitoring, and coastal recovery.
Activists noted that if such resources were committed to a single offshore incident with limited visible impact, then decades of widespread contamination of rivers, farmlands, and air in the Niger Delta should merit far higher levels of investment in restoration and compensation.
They insisted that multinational oil companies must be held accountable for decades of pollution, loss of livelihoods, and destruction of ecosystems, stressing that they must not be allowed to divest and walk away from their liabilities while communities continue to suffer the effects of poisoned water, toxic soil, and contaminated air.
The groups further argued that justice for affected communities means protecting citizens from corporate abuse, ensuring that remediation funds are not trapped in bureaucracy, and guaranteeing people’s rights to clean air, safe water, and productive land.
They also emphasised the need to protect environmental and human rights defenders from harassment or criminalisation, describing their work as a service to humanity.
The groups rejected any attempt to resume oil operations in Ogoniland, stressing that the oil should remain in the ground, warning that renewed drilling would reopen old wounds and deepen the scars of pollution and death left by past exploitation.
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