Table Of Content©
A
Month
c
and
a
^
Day
A
Detention
Diary
AN INTRODUCTION BY WILLIAM BOYD
\
EN SARO-WIWA
}ERIA'S HEROIC MARTYR
Boston Public Library
PENGUIN BOOKS
A MONTH AND A DAY:
A DETENTION DIARY
KenuleBeeson Saro-Wiwa was born in 1941 atBori, on the southern
coast of Nigeria. He was brought up in a large, supportive family
with strong tribal links. He was educated at Government College,
Umuahia, where he later taught, and at the University of Ibadan. In
the mid 1960s he became a graduate assistant at the University of
Nigeria,andthenanassistantlecturerattheUniversityofLagos.
Saro-Wiwa's interest in politics emerged duringthe late 1960s, when
hewasappointedadministratorforBonny,RiversState.Hehadspells
as Commissioner for Works, Land and Transport; Education;
and Information and Home Affairs. In the early 1980s he turned to
writing, and in 1983 he published his first novel. His very success-
&
ful television series, Basi Co., ran from 1985 to 1990. His most
highly respected work was Sozaboy: A Novel in Rotten English: an
odd mixtureof pidgin and idiomaticEnglish, itis a satiricalportrait
of thecorruption of Nigeria's military junta, with a bitingly humor-
ousedge.
From 1990 his writing was ousted by his role as president of the
Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), and he
embarkedon a campaignto bringtheirplighttotheattentionof the
world. In 1993, after the election-day disturbances, Saro-Wiwa was
imprisonedforamonthandaday.Thetextofthisbookisapoignant
accountof his experience in prison. In May 1994four Ogoni leaders
were killed, suspected of collaborating with the military authorities,
and Saro-Wiwa was again arrested, but this time the charge was
murder-anaccusationhealwaysdenied.
On 2 November 1995 Ken Saro-Wiwa was sentenced to death. Eight
dayslaterhewasexecutedatPortHarcourt,Nigeria.
KEN SARO-WIWA
A MONTH AND
A DAY
A Detention Diary
INTRODUCTION BY WILLIAM BOYD
PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
PublishedbythePenguinGroup
PenguinBooksUSAInc.,375HudsonStreet,NewYork,NewYork10014,U.S.A.
PenguinBooksLtd,27WrightsLane,LondonW85TZ,England
PenguinBooksAustraliaLtd,Ringwood,Victoria,Australia
PenguinBooksCanadaLtd,10AlcornAvenue,Toronto,Ontario,CanadaM4V3B2
PenguinBooks(N.Z.)Ltd,182-190WairauRoad,Auckland10,NewZealand
PenguinBooksLtd,RegisteredOffices:Harmondsworth,Middlesex,England
FirstpublishedinPenguinBooks(U.K.) 1995
PublishedinPenguinBooks(U.S.A.)1995
13579 8642
10
Copyright©theEstateofKenSaro-Wiwa,1995
Introductioncopyright©WilliamBoyd,1995
Allrightsreserved
WilliamBoyd'sintroductionfirstappearedinthe27November1995
issueofTheNewYorker.
Coverphotograph©Popperfoto/Reuter
ISBN 1402.59147
(CIPdataavailable)
PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica
Setin11/13ptMonophotoSabon
ExceptintheUnitedStatesofAmerica,thisbookissoldsubjecttothecondition
thatitshallnot,bywayoftradeorotherwise,belent,re-sold,hiredout,orotherwise
circulatedwithoutthepublisher'spriorconsentinanyformofbindingorcoverother
thanthatinwhichitispublishedandwithoutasimilarconditionincludingthis
conditionbeingimposedonthesubsequentpurchaser.
BR BR
PR9387.9
CONTENTS
Z47
1995k
Introduction by William Boyd vii
Preface by Ken Saro-Wiwa 1
A MONTH AND A DAY:
A DETENTION DIARY
INTRODUCTION
Ken Saro-Wiwa was a friend of mine. At eleven thirty in the
morningon 10 November 1995, he was hanged in a prison in
Port Harcourt, in eastern Nigeria, on the orders of General
Sani Abacha, the military leader of Nigeria. Ken Saro-Wiwa
wasfifty-fouryears old, and an innocent man.
I first met Ken in the summer of 1986 at a British Council
seminar at Cambridge University. He had come to England
from Nigeria in his capacity as a publisher and had asked the
British Council to arrange a meeting with me. He had read
my first novel, A Good Man in Africa, and had recognized,
despite fictional names and thin disguises, that it was set in
Nigeria, the country that had been my home when I was in
my teens and early twenties.
Ken had been a student at the University of Ibadan,
in western Nigeria, in the mid sixties. My late father, Dr
Alexander Boyd, had run the university health services there,
and had treated Ken and come to know him. Ken recognized
that the Dr Murray in my novel was a portrait of Dr Boyd
and was curious to meet his son.
I remember that it was a sunny summer day, one of those
days that are really too hot for England. In shirt-sleeves, we
strolled about the immaculate quadrangle of a Cambridge
college, talking about Nigeria. Ken was a small man, prob-
ably no more than five feet two or three. He was stocky and
energetic - in fact, brim-full of energy - and had a big, wide
smile. He smoked a pipe with a curved stem. I learnt later
vn
A MONTH AND A DAY
that the pipe was virtually a logo: in Nigeria people recog-
nized him by it. In newsreel pictures that the Nigerian mili-
tary released of the final days of Ken's show trial, there's
a shot of him walking towards the courthouse, leaning on
a stick, thinner and aged as a result of eighteen months'
incarceration, the familiar pipe still clenched between his
teeth.
Ken was not only a publisher but a businessman (in the
grocerytrade);acelebratedpoliticaljournalist,withaparticu-
larly trenchant and swingeing style; and, I discovered, a pro-
lific writer of novels, plays, poems and children's books
(mostly published by him). He was, in addition, the highly
successful writer and producer of Nigeria's most popular
TV soap opera, Basi & Co., which ran for 150-odd episodes
in the mid eighties and was reputedly Africa's most watched
soap opera, with an audience of up to thirty million. Basi
and his cronies were a bunch of feckless Lagos wide-boys
who, indigent and lazy, did nothing but hatch inept schemes
for becoming rich. Although funny and wincingly accurate,
the show was also unashamedly pedagogic. What was wrong
with Basi and his chums was wrong with Nigeria: none of
them wanted to work, and they all acted as though theworld
owed them a living; if that couldn't be acquired by fair
means foul ones would do just as well. This was soap opera
as a form of civiceducation.
Whenever Ken passed through London, we'd meet for
lunch, usually in the Chelsea Arts Club. His wife and four
children lived inEngland-the children attended school there
- so he was a regular visitor. And, though I wrote a profile
of him for the London Times (Ken was trying to get his
books distributed in Britain), our encounters were mainly
those of two writers with a lot in common, hanging out for
a highly agreeable, bibulous hourorthree.
Ken's writing was remarkably various, covering almost all
Vlll
