HUNCH BEHIND THE BARS of my cell as I speak to the Ameri can sitting across from me. He’s slight of build, middle-aged, and is lacking hair. He leans to one side as he adjusts himself to get comfortable. I am weary from the many years of struggle and disappointment. And now I await my execution, two short hours away. I don’t know how this man gained access to interview me. I’ve not had but one visitor in my brutal two-month-long incarceration—except for the government-paid lawyer who has pretended to defend me through the entire abomination.
I shift nervously in my seat. The prison hall is empty, except for an inmate who is mopping the concrete floor at the opposite end. I answer the man’s question, briefly recounting a little about my life, starting with my father, who was murdered in his sleep almost 50 years before, the same night he cast his vote for peace and unity with our neighboring tribes. The American thrusts the microphone further under my chin as I begin to relate my appointment to the tribal counsel some 13 years afterward.
I tell him how our land once appeared when, as a young boy, I sat on the hillside with my father. The rivers were full of life, so pure that we drank from the water used to irrigate the fields. I hunted plentiful game in the surrounding foothills. The land was green and lush, stretching to the ocean. I had never seen an oil rig or a bulldozer. I wore nothing on my feet but callouses. We had no schools in those days. I was raised to speak only the native tongue of my people.
I tell him that we once stood a chance of overcoming the powers of a greedy government, reclaiming our children who were being taught how to read and think. But alas, my people of less than five hundred thousand were now a lost nation, drowning in a sea of one hundred million Nigerians. A scattered minority race, we live between the Yoruba to the south and the Bura to the north. We are neither northerners nor southerners, trampled under foot for over a hundred years.
I explain how we fought for independence with others of our country, driving the British from our borders, yet we are still invisible to our government. Now they own the rights to our land, a land blessed—or cursed—with more than two hundred billion gallons of oil, much of which has since been bled from the ground. More than 90 percent of our foreign revenue comes from oil dollars. Our government boasts that the richest and purest oil in the world is contained beneath our once-fertile fields, soil now polluted by puddles of mud and slurry. Our rivers are empty of life; a film of deadly oil, which has killed fowl, mammals and fish alike, floats like a shroud.
My people are the poorest in our country. I tell him of the hundreds of villages I have seen burned to the ground. The thousands that have been killed as they stood up for their human rights. Yet our rights continue to be trampled under foot by the military rule, funded by the very revenues taken from the Ogani people.
I don’t know why the guards do not come and send this brazen American reporter packing. Why don’t they come and destroy his tapes on which I describe my people who are dying from a sickness no one can cure? Their bodies weep and stiffen from open sores, until they are drained of life. From the smallest child to the most ancient elder, all are affected. I sigh as I explain: We have been told by those in authority that it is a genetic sickness, one not caused by the oil that pollutes our wells. How odd it is that this malady seems only to affect those who openly oppose the continued rape of our land.
The American pauses to change the tape. He is a pleasant man— appears to be sympathetic to our plight—but displays an insolence in his manner that I do not like. I proceed to tell him I have stood before His Excellency, the Military Governor, to plead our cause, but to no avail. I now stand accused of murders, crimes of which I am innocent. Five of my fellow countrymen and I will be hanged this day for the death of our leaders, assassinated during the recent riot at Sogho. I tell him I am a man of peace and ideals, that I am appalled by the effects of poverty and oppression heaped upon my fellow citizens. Three of those who will be executed were not even present when the riot took place. I am one of those innocents. There was ample evidence that the two chiefs who died in the uprising were fired upon from a distant rooftop. The assassinations were not at our hands.
The American quietly asks who, then, would have done such a thing. I suggest to him that more than likely the assassins were recruited by owners of the oil companies. Surely their wish is to squash our uprising of freedom.
He asks me what evidence I have of such a theory. I explain that information has been smuggled into me through the prison walls and the evidence agrees with my theory. He asks several more questions regarding the matter—and I give him as many answers as I can—before we move on.
In answer to his original question, I say, “What do I want? I want a place where our ministers cannot be jailed and detained for weeks on end without reason; a place where the Ogani people are consulted about the laws, and where the powerful oil companies that rule our lands and steal our livelihood are not the first and last word. The constitution should protect minority rights. I want free choice! I’m not merely begging for it; I demand it! I quote the Holy Quran like my father before me: “All those who fight when oppressed, incur no guilt, but Allah shall punish the oppressor. Come that day!”
Somehow the American has petitioned to allow me a few brief moments with my family. Then two guards enter the room and wait as my loved ones bid their final good-byes. Tears are shed as I am chained hand and foot. Then I am led from the barred room, escorted to a barbed wire compound, and marched up the steps to the waiting gallows.
I stand with the five others, their heads bowed and already covered. My head also is bowed, my eyes fixed on the metal trap door below me, staring at the crack of light that flashes around its edge. I think back to the time I looked through the slim opening in the hut, and, in my mind, can still see the faces of the counsel members seated alongside my father.
A black hood is drawn down over my head, then tied loosely around my neck. It is suffocating. I struggle to take a breath, my heart pounding so loudly that I no longer can hear the cries of the protesters outside the prison gates. The sun beats upon the hood as a heavy noose is pulled down and tightened at my neck. My chest rises and I mumble my final words: “May Allah take my soul unto him. My fight is over; the struggle continues.”
I feel the heavy door collapse beneath me, and hear the thunder of metal striking metal. I am falling....“It’s not fair,” murmurs the American as he watches the bodies twitch under the gallows floor. He struggles to his feet and hobbles from the compound, whispering to himself, “Something must be done to end this crime.”