An Eyewitness, Ibrahim Abdullahi, who was a detainee 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 record of how the late Ogoni pioneer and eight others were killed and covered.
He said the soldiers who completed the execution took their bodies to a bush and poured acid on them before dumping them in a shallow grave.
Abdullahi, who was conceded a state pardon in June this year by the Governor of Cross River State, Ben Ayade, in the wake of going through 30 years in jail, expressed this in a meeting with writers at the African Center for Peace and Development, Abuja.
The 52-year old, who turned into a detainee following the passing of a man he battled with, was at the inside being controlled by Senator Shehu Sani to gather some monetary help to empower him to settle down in the wake of his monotonous long stretches of imprisonment.
The Katsina-born trader said he was in the jail with different detainees when the soldiers brought Saro-Wiwa and three others to join five of their associates earlier imprisoned.
He said the military men assumed control over the whole premises on landing and requested the corrections officers to return home.
He said the whole region was blockaded with four Armored Personnel Carriers situated in various ways.
Abdullahi clarified that Saro-Wiwa, who was the first to be executed, demanded that he was blameless when he was being directed to the hangman’s tree.
The hangman’s tree, as per Abdullahi, was straightforwardly inverse the censured cell where prisoners, including the late Musa Yar’Adua, observed vulnerably as they snuffed life out of him.
He expressed that the ecological rights dissident reviled the individuals who encircled him and furthermore said the Niger Delta locale could never realize harmony following the extraordinary abomination they had submitted.
Abdullahi said the fighters, subsequent to executing the nine Ogoni pioneers, called a few prisoners, including himself, to help with conveying their bodies to a shrub inside a tipper for internment.
He stated, “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 moved to Aba and Owerri penitentiaries individually on the next day however they left Yar’Adua in Port Harcourt.
“One day in 1995, officers brought Saro-Wiwa and three others from the military sleeping enclosure and pursued away everyone who was not a detainee.
” Saro-Wiwa, who was binded in the legs and hands, was walked to the censured cell which was straightforwardly inverse the hangman’s tree where he and others would be hung. They met the five other people who were at that point in the cell.
“One Major Obi, who drove the activity, ensured that no corrections officer saw the execution. They overhauled the hangman’s tree which could execute two individuals one after another. The Attorney-General of Rivers State at that point accompanied a document which contained the charges favored against the Ogoni pioneers.
“The AG went directly to their cell and read the charges to them and returned. One of them, a speaker at the University of Port Harcourt, was crying, deploring that his better half had quite recently brought forth another infant and that he was watching a dry quick on that day.
“Saro-Wiwa kept up that he didn’t request that anyone slaughter anybody yet that the Federal Military Government simply needed to execute him. He at that point said there could never be harmony in Ogoni land everlastingly in light of the blameless spirits that Abacha needed to forfeit. After this, the troopers walked him to the hangman’s tree.
“They drew out his cadaver and put him in a section and they welcomed a medicinal specialist who affirmed him dead. They called four of us to take his carcass.
“That was the means by which they executed them in a steady progression. One of them was notwithstanding calling the name of Jesus until he was pushed to the hangman’s tree.
“After the execution, Major Obi gathered the movies of the swinging from the picture taker and the tape from the video man and requested that we put every one of the bodies inside a tipper which was utilized to group them and four of us to the shrub where they were covered.
“The officers at that point poured crude corrosive on Saro-Wiwa and others when we got to the spot called Bolokiri and their bodies liquefied in a split second inside a solitary pit where they put every one of them.”
