Ken Saro-Wiwa: A Bio-Critical Study

by Femi Ojo-Ade

Ken Saro-Wiwa gained international acclaim and a human rights activist, an environmental crusader and a leader of the Ogoni, one of Nigeria's major ethnic groups in the oil-producing Niger Delta. However his life was more complex, more comprehensive, and more controversial. He combined the creative impulse of the artist with the critical outlook of a commited human being.

In this book Femi Ojo-Ade presents a compelling analysis of the man, his life and work. An intellectual, a businessman andd a politician, Saro-Wiwa explores all those existential realms in his writings. He was an impassioned partisan in the Nigerian civil war during which he became a close friend of the military who, ultimately, became his hangmen after a highly questionable murder charge.

Saro-Wiwa's life is symptomatic of the dilemma of the potentially progressive elements within the African intelligentsia, confused in their quest for change by their inexplicable and often fatal attraction to military dictatorships whose objective, ever retrogressive, have always been geared towardds self-perptuation in power. Even in death, Saro-Wiwa remains relevant as the Nigerian tragedy of oppression and environmentall degradation in the killing fields of the oil-producing area's, continues anabated.

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