A coalition of civil society organisations has strongly condemned President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s recent inclusion of the late environmental rights activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight of his Ogoni compatriots in his presidential clemency list.
The groups described the move as insensitive, misleading, and historically inaccurate, arguing that the pardon fails to acknowledge the grave miscarriage of justice that led to the execution of the Ogoni Nine in 1995.
In a joint statement issued in Abuja, the CSOs, which include the Health of Mother Earth Foundation.
We the People, Environmental Rights Action, HEDA Resource Centre, Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa, and Kebetkache Women Development and Resource Centre, expressed dismay at comments made by Bayo Onanuga, the President’s Special Adviser on Information and Strategy. Onanuga had listed Saro-Wiwa and his colleagues among 175 pardoned individuals alongside illegal miners, white-collar convicts, remorseful drug offenders, foreigners, and others.
The coalition criticised this categorisation, saying it erroneously lumps environmental justice icons with convicted criminals and portrays them as ordinary offenders.
They said the reference to Ken Saro-Wiwa and his comrades by the Presidency is offensive to their memory and that of thousands of Ogonis who suffered indignity and repression under the Abacha regime.
According to the CSOs, the pardon does little to bring closure to the families of the Ogoni Nine or justice to the Ogoni people.
The groups also condemned the State House’s description of four Ogoni leaders as victims of the Ogoni Nine, calling it a distortion of historical facts.
They recalled that Saro-Wiwa, Saturday Dobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel Gbooko, Paul Levera, Felix Nuate, Baribor Bera, and Barinem Kiobel were executed on November 10, 1995, following a military tribunal widely condemned as unjust and politically motivated.
Forced testimonies, denial of appeal rights, and withdrawal of defence lawyers marked the trial, which the international community later described as a judicial murder.
The coalition emphasised that what the world has consistently demanded is not clemency, but exoneration.
They called for a full acknowledgment that the Ogoni Nine were victims of a travesty of justice orchestrated by the military government with the complicity of Shell.
The CSOs further questioned why the Presidency had acknowledged historical injustices against nationalist Sir Herbert Macaulay but had failed to do the same for Saro-Wiwa and his colleagues.
If President Tinubu can recognize that Macaulay was unjustly treated by colonialists, they asked, why is the same not said of the Ogoni Nine who were killed for standing against environmental exploitation?
The organisations warned that the so-called pardon could serve as a precursor to renewed attempts to resume oil extraction in Ogoniland, a move they vowed to resist.
They called on President Tinubu to withdraw the pardon and instead issue an official state apology, coupled with a gazetted pronouncement quashing the murder convictions of the nine activists.
Ken Saro-Wiwa, Baribor Bera, Barinem Kiobel, and their colleagues were not criminals, the CSOs insisted, but heroes who gave their lives for environmental and social justice. Their names, they said, deserve exoneration, not pardon. The statement was endorsed by fourteen organisations, including the Health of Mother Earth Foundation, We the People, Environmental Rights Action, Kebetkache Women Development and Resource Centre, Social Action, Ogoni People’s Assembly, Oilwatch Africa, and the Civil Rights Council, among others.
