For not only pardoning Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others on Thursday, but decorating them with national honours, Suage Bade, son of Albert Bade, one of the four prominent Ogoni leaders killed by a mob in 1994 has a word for President Bola Tinubu – you have killed my father a second time.
“Since yesterday (Thursday) night, I started mourning my father again,” the scion of Bade, a retired permanent secretary in Rivers State Government, who later took on the role of a traditional ruler in his native Ogoni community, said on Friday.
A guest on Prime Time, a public affairs programme on ARISE NEWS, television network, Bade saw the move as propelled by the quest for money, accusing Tinubu of being too eager to see to the commencement of resumption of oil drilling in Ogoni land that he did not care about the consequences of his action.
The pushback came just a day after Tinubu, at the celebration of the 32nd anniversary of June 12, 1993 presidential election, now being marked as Nigeria’s Democracy Day, pardoned the Ogoni-9, led by Saro-Wiwa, leader of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP), the family of the slain leaders also known as the Ogoni-4, hold culpable for the murder of their parents.
Though the President, who made the declaration in a speech he delivered at the joint-sitting of the National Assembly, did not absolve them of guilt in the crime, which led to their arrest, trial and eventual hanging by the military government of Sani Abacha, after their conviction by a military tribunal, he went ahead to confer on them national honours.
Palpably anguished by the gesture, Bade told his host on Friday: “It is a complete disregard for the memory of our fathers, who actually served this country diligently without blemish over the years and were killed, murdered in cold-blood in broad daylight by the same men that are being honoured today – yesterday – and they made no mention of the four. It’s a very sad development.”
Acknowledging that Saro-Wiwa and the rest might not have participated in physically killing the Ogoni-4, he said they remained blameworthy by vicarious responsibility, because they were the ones who instigated the mob as leaders of MOSOP, the group agitating over the activities of oil companies in the community.
He added: “It is actually a vicarious responsibility on the part of those who were at the leadership of MOSOP at that time. So, if they were leading MOSOP and people were defamed and at the end of the day, they conspired, hacked them down, butchered them and today we have not seen their bodies, how else do you – you know that if somebody assigns somebody to go and kill and you’re not there, you have also killed that person.
“So, he was the mastermind of the killing. I’ve said that before, he was the mastermind for the murder of the four. However, for me, I don’t have anything with the pardon, what I feel that is wrong, which is an aberration is how do you honour a murderer that you have just pardoned. Then you said nothing about the four, our fathers that were butchered to death. They didn’t disappear.
“Pardon is okay, as I said. It’s the President’s prerogative to grant pardon. But to now honour murderers, I think we are now introducing a new low in our Nigerian society, because a lot of Ogonis who escaped and went under the cover of United Nations Refugee Programme, are you telling me if they return, you’re also going to accord them an OON (Officer of the Order of the Niger)?
“We have a lot of respectable Nigerians like Wole Soyinka and other people who deserve such honour. But I can now see why Chinua Achebe turned down such an offe,r because it looks like values are not being considered anymore. You can now be a career murderer and be given an honour in Nigeria. That’s what it means. That’s the new low.
“So, I’m not happy about this because my father was a man who was straightforward. He served and at the end of the day, contributed in development, not only in the sphere of his service, but in Ogoni. But all he got from the people he served, through Saro-Wiwa’s evil rhetoric was for people to hack him down, cut him into pieces and take his body away and till today, there’s no remorse.
“Well, we can’t cry on for more than 30 years. If certain people in Ogoni don’t want to be remorseful for what they did and they want to stand by all the lies, and continue to promote themselves, because they want to enrich themselves – because they have protruding stomachs that cannot be filled and continue an activism that is not real to the people – I want to say for the Bade family and for others, we have reached a point, we hand it over to God.
“I think all of these is all about how to come to Ogoni and get oil and they are in a hurry about it. I’m not in a hurry to betray my father for any form of compensation. In fact, honouring him and putting him side by side with murderers, I don’t think I will accept that. I don’t need compensation.”
Regarding to many who are calling for the total exculpation of the Ogoni-9 of blame over the incident, Bade, attributed it to disinformation, which he said usually led to misinformation adding that a lot of people, particularly the younger generation who did not know the true story, saying if they truly knew the correct story, the situation would be different.
“Just imagine that a man left his house and then he was hacked down. I was there. I saw blood splatter all around the wall in the palace. Today, they refer to that place in Gokana as “slaughter.” People leave their homes and say they’re going to “slaughter.” Then people like Ledum Mitie, Professor Ben Nanem and all those who are agitators for MOSOP, who have the responsibility to turn around for good, they have created a transgenerational catastrophe in Ogoni land.
“This is going to pass through generations and Ogoni is remain divided. I’m so sad. What the President did is wrong. I used to see him as one who listens to both sides and does the right thing. But unfortunately, I think he is misguided and I don’t know why he fell to that.”