Ken saro wiwa biography book

Hanged by the Nigerian government on November 10, 1995, Ken Saro-Wiwa became a martyr for the Ogoni people and human rights activists, and a symbol of modern Africans' struggle against military dictatorship, corporate power, and environmental exploitation.

Though he is rightly known for his human rights and environmental activism, he wore many hats: writer, television producer, businessman, and civil servant, among others. Like others in the Ohio Short Histories of Africa series, Ken Saro-Wiwa is written to be accessible to the casual reader and student, yet indispensable to scholars.

KEN SARO-WIWA was a novelist, television producer, and environmental activist born in Bori, Nigeria in 1941.

Saro-Wiwa won a scholarship to study English at the University of Ibadan and taught briefly at numerous universities before the Nigerian Civil War in 1967.

A prolific writer, his work ranged from the wildly successful satirical television series Basi ở Company (1986-1990) to a non-fiction account of his experiences during the Civil War, On a Darkling Plain (1989).

From 1991, Saro-Wiwa devoted himself full-time to political and ecological causes, becoming president of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People.

The movement fought against the irreparable environmental damage that oil corporations were causing to the surrounding land and waters.

After years of non-violent protest against government inaction, Ken Saro-Wiwa was unlawfully detained under the military dictatorship of General Sani Abacha. While the book sheds light on his many legacies, it is above all about Saro-Wiwa the man, not just Saro-Wiwa the symbol.

Roy Doron and Toyin Falola portray a man who not only was formed by the complex forces of ethnicity, race, class, and politics in Nigeria, but who drove change in those same processes.