Soldiers poured acid on Saro-Wiwa after execution –Eyewitness

An eyewitness, Ibrahim Abdullahi, who was a prisoner when the
environmental rights activist, the late Ken Saro-Wiwa, was killed
in 1995 by the late General Sani Abacha government, on Thursday,
gave his account of how the late Ogoni leader and eight others were
killed and buried.

He said the soldiers who carried out the execution took their
corpses to a bush and poured acid on them before dumping them in a
shallow grave.

Abdullahi, who was granted a state pardon in June this year by
the Governor of Cross River State, Ben Ayade, after spending 30
years in prison, stated this in an interview with journalists at
the African Centre for Peace and Development, Abuja.

The 52-year old, who became a prisoner following the death of a
man he fought with, was at the centre being run by Senator Shehu
Sani to collect some financial assistance to enable him to settle
down after his long years of incarceration.

The Katsina-born trader said he was in the prison with other
inmates when the soldiers brought Saro-Wiwa and three others to
join five of their colleagues earlier jailed.

He said the military men took over the entire premises on
arrival and ordered the warders to go home.

He said the entire area was barricaded with four Armoured
Personnel Carriers positioned in different directions.

Abdullahi explained that Saro-Wiwa, who was the first to be
executed, insisted that he was innocent when he was being led to
the gallows.

The gallows, according to Abdullahi, was directly opposite the
condemned cell where inmates, including the late Musa Yar’Adua,
watched helplessly as they snuffed life out of him.

He stated that the environmental rights activist cursed those
who framed him and also said the Niger Delta region would never
know peace following the great atrocity they had committed.

Abdullahi said the soldiers, after killing the nine Ogoni
leaders, called some inmates, including himself, to assist in
carrying their corpses to a bush inside a tipper for burial.

He said, “I was in the cell one day in 1995 when they brought
the late Gen. Shehu Musa Yar’Adua (retd.), Senator Shehu Sani and
Sanusi Mato. Sani and Mato were transferred to Aba and Owerri
prisons respectively on the following day but they left Yar’Adua in
Port Harcourt.

“One day in 1995, soldiers brought Saro- Wiwa and three others
from the military barracks and chased away everybody who was not a
prisoner.

“ Saro-Wiwa, who was chained in the legs and hands, was marched
to the condemned cell which was directly opposite the gallows where
he and others would be hung. They met the five others who were
already in the cell.

“One Major Obi, who led the operation, made sure that no warder
witnessed the execution. They serviced the gallows which could
execute two people at a time. The Attorney-General of Rivers State
then came with a file which contained the charges preferred against
the Ogoni leaders.

“The AG went straight to their cell and read the charges to them
and went back. One of them, a lecturer at the University of Port
Harcourt, was crying, lamenting that his wife had just given birth
to a new baby and that he was observing a dry fast on that day.

“Saro-Wiwa maintained that he did not ask anybody to kill anyone
but that the Federal Military Government just wanted to kill him.
He then said there would never be peace in Ogoni land forever
because of the innocent souls that Abacha wanted to sacrifice.
After this, the soldiers marched him to the gallows.

“They brought out his corpse and put him in a slab and they
invited a medical doctor who certified him dead. They called four
of us to take his corpse.

“That was how they executed them one after the other. One of
them was even calling the name of Jesus until he was pushed to the
gallows.

“After the execution, Major Obi collected the films of the
hanging from the photographer and the tape from the video man and
asked us to put all the corpses inside a tipper which was used to
covey them and four of us to the bush where they were buried.

“The soldiers then poured raw acid on Saro-Wiwa and others when
we got to the place called Bolokiri and their bodies melted
instantly inside a single pit where they put all of them.”

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