Refusing to be Silent: Dr Owens Wiwa

It was over 20 years ago that Irish nun Sister Majella McCarron first met Ken Saro-Wiwa. Sister Majella was working as a teacher in Lagos when she heard the story of the Ogoni people and their conflict with the Royal Dutch Shell company.

Ogoniland is a small region in the southeast of the Niger Delta. Home to more than half a million people, the area was suffering severe environmental devastation as a result of drilling. Saro-Wiwa was the leader of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), a non-violent organisation dedicated to opposing Shell. Moved by the story of the Ogoni, Sister Majella sought to meet with Saro-Wiwa to see how she might contribute to the cause. A close friendship formed, with Saro-Wiwa writing extensively to her over a sustained period. Those letters have been gathered in a new volume, Silence Would Be Treason, published in collaboration with the National University of Ireland Maynooth.

Saro-Wiwa’s brother, Dr Owens Wiwa, fondly recalls the relationship between Sister Majella and his brother.

“My late brother introduced her to us as the ‘Ogoni angel’,” he smiles. “She was a great help to our struggle. She introduced us to a much wider audience, including Trócaire and those of the Catholic faith who helped us a lot. She came to Ogoni and visited the wounded and the sick and went to the villages that were destroyed.”

Ken Saro-Wiwa was found guilty of incitement to the murder of four Ogoni chiefs, a charge he denied. He was hung on November 10, 1995 along with eight other MOSOP leaders. The executions provoked an international outcry and led to the suspension of Nigeria from the Commonwealth of Nations. One year after his execution, Saro-Wiwa was awarded the Right Livelihood Award and would later be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize.

The majority of the letters in the book were written during the 18 months that Saro-Wiwa was imprisoned in the Port Harcourt detention centre. Despite the constant threat of death, the letters are hopeful, positive, in effect representing a triumph of spirit. Dr Wiwa believes the letters reveal a side of his brother that many might not have seen before.

“The most important aspect of these letters is that people will be able to see my brother’s heart, the clarity of his thoughts and what was important to him. They will see the side that a lot of people didn’t have the privilege to see: his love for his family, his love for the Ogoni people, his seriousness about clean environments and the fact that he would do anything non-violent to get justice. He would go to great lengths to see that there was justice for vulnerable people.”

That the letters exist at all is extraordinary. They were smuggled from Saro-Wiwa’s prison cell in bread baskets, before a courier would take them to Dr Wiwa, who himself was in hiding at the time. He sent them on to Sister Majella.

“It is really wonderful that Sister Majella was able to preserve these letters. Most people who also got letters had to hide them so much that they got defaced or lost, but this book has given us an example of what can be done.”

The title of the book was carefully chosen. Dr Wiwa believes that it is important that stories such as his brother’s are told, so that corporations are held accountable for their actions.

“We cannot continue to be silent about the injustice that was done to my brother, to the Ogoni environment and to its people. This sort of injustice continues to be done in communities where there are mining interests, where the multinational companies do not care that this land is a source of livelihood for the people that live there. In their quest for profits they don’t remember that they are destroying people’s lives; or maybe because the people are powerless, poor or of a different colour, they just don’t see them.”

Dr Wiwa himself is a vocal supporter of Shell To Sea, the organisation based in Erris, Co Mayo that oppposes the construction of a natural gas pipeline.

“It is very important,” he proffers. “They have held back Shell for 10 years and that is remarkable. I met some of the activists and they told me that they will continue to hold back Shell, no matter how big the harassment. They are very courageous.”

The publishers of Silence Would Be Treason hope that it can reach a wide audience, particularly in Saro-Wiwa’s native Nigeria, where the book will be distributed freely to those who can’t afford it, courtesy of the revenue generated from Irish sales.

Finally, Dr Wiwa notes that the bond between Sister Majella and the Ogoni people remains strong. “I keep in contact with her through letters and emails,” he says. “In every way possible, she is an Ogoni in our mind.”