Nigeria must own up to the blood shed for oil

Twenty years since the 'judicial killing' of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni nine activists, the government refuses to recognise the price paid by Niger Delta residents

The Nigerian government is struggling to confront its past abuses, and nowhere is this clearer than in the case of the Ogoni nine, the environmental activists from the Niger Delta hanged in 1995 by the Sani Abacha regime on trumped-up charges.

I was five years old when playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa, a leading figure in the Ogoni people's movement, was executed alongside eight others, and I lived through the legacy of his fight to protect the oil-rich land by Shell and other corporations.