Death row memoir: Ken Saro-Wiwa letters given to NUI Maynooth

A SERIES of letters and poems arising out of an unlikely friendship between an Irish missionary nun and the Nigerian writer and social activist Ken Saro-Wiwa have been handed over to NUI Maynooth.

Saro-Wiwa was executed by the Nigerian military government 16 years ago yesterday. His death, along with those of eight other activists for the Ogoni people in the Niger Delta, sparked international outrage.

Fermanagh-born missionary Sr Majella McCarron first met Saro-Wiwa while working for the Missionary Sisters of our Lady of Apostles in Nigeria.

She took a keen interest in the Ogoni people who had been victims of repeated oil spills which caused environmental devastation in Ogoniland.

Saro-Wiwa set up the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP) and campaigned against environmental destruction.

He was arrested along with eight others on the pretext of having murdered four people and was detained between 1993 and 1995 when he was executed. It was while he was on death row that he wrote 30 letters to Sr McCarron, 27 poems and made seven videos.

The letters express his desire that the Ogoni people would get justice and he took a key interest in jail in the peace process, particularly after the IRA ceasefire in August 1994.

In one of his poems he spoke about the possibility of peace in both Nigeria and Northern Ireland and referred to the “hunger for justice and peace which married our memories to a journey of faith”.

Sr McCarron described Saro-Wiwa as a man of “extreme insight” who had the energy to follow his convictions. She said she understood what was happening to the Ogoni people given her own background in the North.

“I was quick to understand the struggle that a minority people can be subjected to. Ken and I spoke at length about the problems concerning the Ogoni people. I think he felt I was a benign, spiritual presence.”

Nothing phased him, she said, and she believed he was ultimately successful in ensuring that the multinational Shell was not allowed to drill for oil in Ogoniland.

She said there was a lesson for the people of Rossport in the treatment of Saro-Wiwa most notably that they had a right to be informed about what was going on in their area.