Senator Ben Birabi is the founding President of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) and a former President of the pressure group, KAGOTE – an acronym for Khana, Gokana, Tai and Eleme local government areas of Rivers state. Birabi who was a Signatory to the Ogoni Bill of Rights, told AriseNews Morning Show anchors that the Ogoni 9 recently honoured by President Bola Tinubu did not deserve the award. Excerpts:

Two things. One, Shell returning to Ogoni land after 32 years, if you can take us through all of that, how we got to this point, the compensation, the oil spillage, the role of Shell in Ogoni land, and is there any guarantee that there will be peace and better community relations this time around? The second question will have to do with the recognition and pardon for the Ogoni Nine by President Tinubu, and then including the Ogoni Nine in the National Honours List. How is the community receiving that?

The last time we went to see the President, I raised some issues about the conduct of the committee, and I reiterated the fact that Ogonis want oil production to resume for economic and political reasons. But the problem has been the approach of the government, and I want to put it very clearly. The reason that there has been this problem is that the government assumes that there are no people in Ogoni, and so they can use who they like in Ogoni to secure Ogoni buy-in. So they handpick who they like and expect whoever they pick to be able to get the people to welcome the government.

Ogonis are very independent-minded people and are very fearless, too, and what has happened in the last 32 years or so should let everybody know that Ogonis are not afraid of anybody. But they are also not easy to railroad. They are not slaves.

So every succeeding government has tried to, you know, take for example, you just come, you pick somebody who was your driver some time back, and then you ask him to go and call a meeting of the chiefs in his village, you know, because that is the person you know. No, Ogoni has a history. Our place has been very organized. If we were not organized, we wouldn’t be where we are today.

I was the chairman of KAGOTE, and MOSOP was formed in my house, and I decided, I conducted the elections.

The person (Ken Sero-Wiwa) who took over MOSOP as a propaganda machine was only appointed or elected publicity secretary for the fact that he was a media guru, very intelligent guy. He is older than me, no doubt about that, but, you know, this is not about age, it is about tradition, it is about pedigree, it is about where you come from. It is the refusal of the government to recognise that every institution, every community has got its roots and foundation.

That is what is keeping us where we are today. So they pick who they want and expect him to do what they want him to do, even when the person cannot sleep in his village without government security. So that is the problem.

We are ready for oil resumption. We need it but it cannot be done exactly the same way they were doing it, you know, 60 years ago or since 1958. It is not possible. Over time, Ogoni has grown, and I said it before, by the time Shell came into Ogoni, there was only one university graduate from Ogoni. Today, every Ogoni family has a lawyer.

We cannot count the number of engineers and petroleum engineers or chemical engineers in Ogoni. So you don’t expect the same way you treated us six, seven or eight years ago to hold today. It is not possible.

The team that was selected to go and see the president, I wasn’t even a member. But because I had had some previous relationship with Nuhu Ribadu, he was the one who put my name there. And I came, and the team that they put together wouldn’t even want to hear, not a single one of these fellows there in that group was present when we formed MOSOP. Not one of them. So they don’t even know why we formed MOSOP. So how do you solve a problem you don’t understand? But because I am not that slavish to just follow whatever is said without asking questions, then they made sure that every discussion about Ogoni, I am excluded.

Unfortunately, I am not worried about that, I cannot cry more than the bereaved. You know, I am an Ogoni son, so was my father and my grandfather. But if this is what they want, so be it. One thing I can say for sure is that oil resumption can happen in Ogoni.

How about the recognition of the Ogoni Nine by President Tinubu?

I think that the President was being misled and misadvised. What Ogoni needs is not recognition of killers.

No, not recognition of killers. Recognition of martyrs. Ken Saro-Wiwa was not a killer.

The person who killed the elders is a martyr? No, it depends.

Ken Saro-Wiwa was a killer?

It depends on where you are coming from. You know, the event that led to this crisis, I just happened to be here today because God wanted me to be here. You know, I simply did not get there in time.

I was like 30 minutes late. That was why I am still here and this happened in our homeland at 12 noon. And the people who did the killing, the mob, did not wear masks. So, they were all known and seen by our people and they were not strangers. So, for you to wake up and say they are martyrs is not right. Martyrs are people who fought for the people and died for their cause. What was the cause they fought and died for? That is the question. The same cause that we established MOSOP for, was the same cause that these people were fighting for, but simply because somebody wanted to be the emperor. He had found some public acclaim through propaganda.

I know there are positive and negative propaganda. Propaganda is just raising awareness for a particular cause. In this case, what was the cause? The people who were killed, what were they doing against the Ogoni people? What did they do against the Ogoni people? You just point a finger and you capitalize on the poverty of the people and tell them that all the money that were going to Ogoni, that would have come to Ogoni, have been taken by these people. So, unless, for me particularly, he called a meeting in my village and got all the youth, young men in my village and said, ‘unless and until the Birabi is no longer there, nobody in this village can make progress. In the 50s, we were dancing, we were singing Birabi. In the 60s, we were singing Birabi. In the 70s, if a minister is mentioned it is Birabi’s son, a House of Reps is Birabi’s son, a Senator is Birabi’s son. If they call your own father’s name one day, what will happen?’ What do you expect the young men to do? He didn’t tell them to kill me, but that was enough.

Senator Birabi, are you saying that the persecution and the killing of the Ogoni Nine was justified? Is that what you are saying?

Is that what I am saying? You call it persecution? That was not persecution. They were properly accused because they were seen and known. The only person that I tried to bargain for, and I did my best, but it didn’t work, was Saro Wiwa himself, because I said, he was not physically present at the scene of murder.

So, at best, he could be charged for manslaughter or for instigating the murder. But despite that, I reached out to the Emir of Kano to try and see whether he could prevail on Abacha to at least exclude him but it didn’t work. Reason behind that is a detail for another day. So, the people who were accused, there might be some one or two innocent people, because most of the people who actually did the killing, some of them ran away. Some of the people who supervised the killing are the ones who are receiving national awards today. So, propaganda could be positive or negative. When it works positively, it is development.

When it is negative, it ruins a place. 33 years ago, it has done nothing, we have degenerated.

They got a presidential pardon. So, they have been pardoned for any allegations you are making now against them. Let us underline the pardon.

Secondly, tell your own side of the story on what you claim led to the killing of those elders.

Fantastic. Can I tell you? It was purely an ego war and because I was an insider, I know. When Rivers state was created, Saro Wiwa was appointed Commissioner for Education and by virtue of the Rivers state policy at the time, because manpower was a major problem in Rivers state, Rivers state gave free scholarship to all Rivers citizens.

And because he was Commissioner for Education, he oversaw that scholarship scheme and a lot of Ogoni people, young men, got scholarships to go abroad, except one, yours truly. Everybody traveled abroad. So he was a very popular person, by happenstance, that he happened to have been the Commissioner for Education. All of us accepted it. Even me was more or less like, you know, his ward because I spent my holidays, all my holidays in his house.

Now, he quarreled with all the Ogoni elders, to the extent that not one of them would greet him. In 1977, when they were doing the Constitutional Conference, he now came out, he wanted to go to the Constitutional Conference and the elders voted against him. He lost the election to some peripheral Ogoni person from Eleme and that got him in a very bad mood.

Of course, then he had left the government and he just went on his own business. Succeeded very much as a businessman. He was a writer, author and playwright. We all know that and then he went on. In 1991, I was elected as President of KAGOTE. He was not a member of KAGOTE but because of my personal relationship with him, I insisted, unless they allowed him to join KAGOTE, I would not accept the presidency. And I brought him into KAGOTE.

Because I had already discussed, you know, talking about what to do about Ogoni oil, MOSOP was founded on the situation in Oloibiri, that we did not want Ogoni to look like Oloibiri when our oil dries up. So we had insisted that unless they industrialised Ogoni with our raw material, oil should stop.

That was the basic understanding and because of that, I invited him to KAGOTE. I then used the KAGOTE, my position as President of KAGOTE, to now form MOSOP, which the coinage was by him. But I formed the MOSOP and got everybody else to buy into it. His position was Publicity Secretary but somehow he convinced me that Publicity Secretary didn’t give him enough clout to be able to discuss and talk Ogoni. That he should remain in his position as spokesman.

I took it up and called a meeting of KAGOTE, and we passed that resolution. No sooner than he became spokesman, when trouble broke out again. I went to the Senate. I was in the Senate as Minority Leader when the June 12 election came. He on his own unilaterally decided Ogoni was not going to go into election. I didn’t know that he had already formed a gang of youths and so on, whom he indoctrinated. They called them NYCOP. And on June 12, I was nearly stabbed in my house. My pyjamas still carry the blood today. I have it in my house here.

Then from that June 12 and that crisis that broke out, Ogoni was no longer the same. We now had a group of the elders who were the elders of Ogoni who brought him in and who gave him that position. He labeled all of us vultures. In my own case, he came out and collected the youths in my village and told them what I said, that so long as I am still around, nobody will hear their names in this village, that it is only Birabi they will be worshipping. And he did that all over the place. Then the coup happened.

Abacha took over. In that state of discord that we were, he came around and said he wanted to go and represent Ogoni at the Constitutional Conference in 1995 and that was where the trouble started.

We said you cannot represent Ogoni when you are not in talking terms with the elders in Ogoni. What are you going there to say? So being the political leader of the place at the time, I decided he was not going to represent us at the constitutional conference. That was the cause of the killing. It had nothing to do with oil. Because he lost the election in 1977, and now that he has become internationally acclaimed as Ogoni spokesman and leader, he was about to lose another election. That was the cause of the killing. He instigated the boys to the extent that they were preparing for whatever was going to happen, and I got the information.

Okay, Senator Birabi, hope you have your facts and your evidences, because we will call upon you to bring these facts someday, someday soon.

I am talking to you as it happened. I am talking to you about what happened and what is real. Anybody who has a counter can come and confront me.

Senator Birabi, I see that the personality conflicts of old have not disappeared. It was in May 1994 that the four elders were killed. It was on November 10, 1995, that the Abacha government executed Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others. It is very shocking that in 2025 the matter is still as fresh in your mind as it was in 1995. However, there is another group, they call themselves Conscience of Ogoni People, who have gone to the Federal High Court. From the Federal High Court now, they have gone to the Supreme Court to say that the Ogoni Nine, Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others, should be exonerated by the Supreme Court and that is in addition to the pardon that has been granted by President Tinubu. However, Shell, that is a big issue, is coming back to resume exploration activities. Can you tell us, now that you say Ogoni People have graduates, they have petroleum engineers, in specific terms, what are the expectations of the Ogoni People?

I am not worried about pardon granted to these people, because it doesn’t change the facts. And in any case, the people who have been killed cannot rise, we can’t raise them up. So what is important is how do we move forward? But we cannot move forward by denigrating innocent people who were murdered out of sheer propaganda and malice. We cannot do that. We cannot create peace in Ogoni by urinating on the graves of our elite and our elders. And then you now claim that the people who were convicted for their murders are martyrs. Do we understand the meaning of martyr? So it is a propaganda game that has gone on for too far, but the propaganda doesn’t change the reality.

Propaganda can only succeed for now, but the reality remains, and the reality is what we are seeing. The President has a right to grant pardon. Yes. But in the whole of his speech and the pardon, what is the reference? Why were they convicted in the first instance? Does it mean that the people who died that led to their conviction were not human beings? Were they not human beings? How unfair can anybody be? Nobody is asking that question about the victims.

I want to ask you about Shell’s return. What are the expectations of the Ogoni people?

The expectation of Ogoni people is simple. You cannot operate, you cannot return to Ogoni and operate the same way you operated since 1958. There are things that you can do. And in fact, the man who is leading this whole facade, the NSA, Nuhu Ribadu, he knows because I’ve had a conversation with him. He knows what to do. He knows the expectation of Ogoni people, but he doesn’t want to go there because he is listening to his group of friends who are working with him and I don’t have a problem with it. They can do whatever they like. I have lived my good life in Ogoni and the only thing is that my children don’t have a home to return to anymore, if this goes on like this.

Okay, but you will expect Shell to pay more attention to community relations, to patronize elders, to take care of the youths?

Not at all. It is not an individual thing or any Elder. What is driving the process now is how much Elders can get? They are capitalizing on the poverty rate of Ogoni people. It is not an Elder thing. There are holistic things that should be done and if they are not done, they can go ahead. I mean, government has absolute powers. The government can even decide to wipe out a race and nothing will happen, because we have seen this all over the world. They can go ahead, but definitely some of us are not sold on to this rubbish, because we are not afraid to say the truth.