Martyr's legacy a decade later

Ken Wiwa pleads for his father's life at a press conference in Auckland in 1995, just two days before Ken Saro-Wiwa was hanged.

Ken Wiwa was in Auckland when he heard that his father, the writer and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, had been hanged, after an internationally-condemned sham trial, by the Nigerian military Government.

It was November 10, 1995. Ken Wiwa had come to Auckland to lobby politicians attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in an effort to save his 54-year-old father, who had been sentenced to death for allegedly ordering the killings of four men during a riot.

Speaking by phone from Port Harcourt, Nigeria, Mr Wiwa confessed he remembers little about Auckland. Except for one searingly vivid memory.

"All this week, I've been thinking about what happened 10 years ago," he said, "and the thing that sticks in my mind [is this]: I remember walking up a hill and stopping to watch the sun set ... I just remember very clearly the incredible sunset and the sun slowly sinking.

"Darkness fell and there was complete silence over the city. It was a grey, foggy kind of silence ... and whenever I hear 'Auckland' that's what I think of: a grey, foggy silence."

Towards midnight, Mr Wiwa felt an unusual thump in his chest. "It felt like a vital connection had been ruptured inside me, and I just knew," he said this week. "It was midnight in Auckland and midday in Nigeria, and my father had just been hanged; his broken body lay in a shallow pit in a hut ... "

The execution prompted angry outpourings from the Queen, Nelson Mandela, US President Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister John Major and across the world. Nigeria was suspended from the Commonwealth.

And 10 years on? Ken Saro-Wiwa is a martyr to environmental and minority rights activism for his mobilisation of the Ogoni minority against the oil giants' degradation of the Niger Delta and the anniversary of his death is to be marked all around the world.

Mr Wiwa, now 36 and himself a writer, described in his bitterly honest book, In the Shadow of A Saint (2000), how much he resented his father's dedication to the cause to the detriment of his family.

He has now accepted the role of protector of his father's legacy - though he eschews formal politics - and bounces between London, where wife Olivia and their two children live, and Nigeria. He runs the property and media businesses built by his father, and ensures his writings remain accessible.

Saro-Wiwa's bones were retrieved last year with the help of American forensic experts, and Mr Wiwa is working to have his father exonerated. "My father is a convicted criminal ... and we want that stain removed from his name."

Influential people support the move, but others fear Ken Saro-Wiwa's legacy, he said. "My father will be restored to his rightful place in this country's history ... when people with the right frame of mind, who appreciate what he did for this country, have the courage of their convictions."

And Nigeria itself a decade later? "The human rights situation has improved marginally," Mr Wiwa said, " ... there are still extra-judicial killings and arbitrary arrests and people in detention without charge.

"After 10 years, my father's life hasn't quite been vindicated in this country, but ... there has been a shift in attitudes, certainly in the issues my father championed. The control of resources has become part of the political debate as a result of his campaigning."