Book: A Month and a Day: A Detention Diary
Author: Ken Saro-Wiwa
Year of Publication: 1995
Publisher: Spectrum Books Limited
Reviewer: Olutayo Irantiola
The ‘Oga at the Top’ phrase
largely attributed to the former Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps
(NSCDC) Commandant in Lagos State, Shem Obafaiye had been silently in existence
for ages before it went viral in March 2013. The detention diary of Ken
Saro-Wiwa typified the experience of eloquent activists during the deadly
military junta prevalent in Africa. The endless struggle for power abounds
despite the return to ‘pseudo-democracy’ and it can all be summed up as the
greatest inhumanity of the Black man to his kind.
Kenule Beeson Saro-Wiwa is and
was the foremost environmental activist from Ogoni, Rivers State. He fought the
war against the environmental degradation of his fatherland wholeheartedly till
he became the target of both the government and the oil companies that did not
give a damn even at the behest of the international community. This book is an account
of his experience between the 21st of June 1993 and the 22nd
of July 1993 while he was held captive for the boycott of Ogoni indigenes in 12th
of June 1993 Presidential elections. This was his fourth arrest in three
months. However, he remained undeterred, he stood for this cause till he was
accused of murder and executed in 1995.
This review will expose on the
known colloquial phrases that pervade the civil service; the impediment of the
efficiency of the civil service and the results of military force on civilians.
The book opened with the
description of how Ken was accosted within the Port Harcourt metropolis, he had
become ‘a well-known customer’ to the State Security Service. This depicted the
extent to which he had become familiar with different law enforcement agents.
He frolicked with them whenever they came for him.
Another statement that is commonly
associated with the civil service is ‘we know our job’. According to the
author, ‘the implication was that I was trying to teach him his job: a sin in
Nigerian official circles punishable by great wickedness’. This showed the
level at which civil servants abhor confrontational and assertive people.
The perennial contention between
the lawyers and the Nigerian Police was also pinpointed in the book. According
to Ken Saro-Wiwa, ‘The lawyer came and he was ordered to leave…. The Nigerian
police hate lawyers. They do not mind doctors.’ Both organizations have the
same denomination, law, but unfortunately, they are constantly at loggerhead.
Saro-Wiwa in the fourth chapter
of the book, the longest chapter, described his modus operandi in equipping
himself against the enriching ‘deals’ that pervaded the country-within the
civil service; between the civil service and her contractors etc. He went into
trading, invested in properties thereafter he divested into writing and
publishing.
‘It
was also important that in seeking limited financial security. I should
maintain
My
integrity and not go into deals Nigerian-style such as would make it impossible
For
me to look anyone in the eyes.’
A hypothetical deal was described
around the medical care of inmates when he was sick while in custody. The
clinic where he was taken was a newly constructed one. He said the building had
been constructed in the usual splash and dash manner of Nigerian official
contract jobs, no doubt at ten times the normal cost.’
The sordid description of the
premises of the Nigerian police and the inhuman treatment meted out on
detainees. Some of the notable places mentioned included-
Central Police
Station described it thus, ‘It was in disrepair. The lawn was littered with
cars, in different colours and states. Some appeared to have been there for
ages, waiting to be used for exhibits for cases that would never be tried.’ The
full treatment of someone in police custody had been given to Dube and Nwiee …they
had been thrown into the guardroom… they met with hardened criminals and petty
thieves who held court and charged newcomers specific fees.’
The notorious
Alagbon Close was said to be ‘extremely dirty. The wall were grimy with the
marks of the years. The place had not been painted for ages. Ken Saro-Wiwa
passed the night in the reception and the sergeant on duty was informed that he
was not to go into the guardroom for the night. He was offered a room where he
had his meal, ‘cobwebby, dusty, unswept with broken cupboards and grimy desks
lying in thorough disorder.
His experience
at the Imo State Police Command was narrated thus ‘we were led into a room…
there was no light in it, the only available light coming from a beam which
fell from the fluorescent tube in the corridor. There was no door, the only
door having fallen off its hinges… Opposite the room was a bathroom from which
came the stinking odour of human waste.
The Police
Station at Awka with ‘the inside totally intolerably. It was all cobwebby and
the walls were smudged. Truly, no one could ever do meaningful work in such a messy,
grimy surrounding.’
The Port
Harcourt prison said as having ‘the exterior is solid, grey and forbidden… its
interior is grimy, squalid and dilapidated.’ The state of a nation can be told
by the way it keep its prisons, prisoners being mostly out of sight. The
negligence, callousness and incompetence of some thieving officials who had run
the place over the years had a lot to do with it.
While he was
conveyed in a Peugeot J5 during the ordeal, ‘the bus itself reeked of the smell
of petrol.
Part of the painful happenings
within the civil service include the downward trend of happenings in our
country. As of 1993 when the writer was postulating, it was not as bad as what
is obtainable now. According to him, ‘Our ship of state is today sinking! A few
are manipulating the system to their advantage, but our intellectuals, our
women, our youths, the masses are being flushed down the drain. All our
systems, educational, economic, health, are in shambles.’
The biased reportage of State-owned
media was used by the Rivers State Government against Ken Saro-Wiwa. The
copious example is that of Nigerian Tide, the newspaper that he set up in 1971
when he was the Commissioner for Information and Home Affairs, ‘… the newspaper
had since been misused by successive administrations and was now more and less
useless.’
The archetypal bureaucracy of the
civil service was seen in two different ways; among the law enforcement agents,
the Nigerian Police and the Nigerian Prison Service on how a detainee can access
medical aids and the judiciary. All judges were not willing to sign the writs
while Lagos lawyers were boycotting the court for one week; it took a brave
judge in Owerri to sign it. All of these slowed down judicial verdicts.
Another disaster that has
befallen the civil service is the inability of her officers to be vocal about
the challenges that have befallen the society in general. ‘I felt sorry for…
all those men and women who were being forced by the system to subvert the law,
tell lies, play dirty tricks, in order to earn their monthly pay.’
Also, the poor remuneration of
civil servants as exemplified by the dismal condition of service of the
officers of the Nigerian Prison Service, was a part of the discourse, and the
salary a mere pittance.
Other renowned things that happen
in Nigeria mentioned in the book include the firing of tear gas canisters at
protesters; the killing of women; the detention of the journalist of The News magazine; the betrayal of those
that should support the same cause; the state of Nigerian roads; trigger happy uniform
officers; the care of detainees left to their families and friends while in
incarceration; the ransack of people’s private homes; the way in which international organizations
get away with environment degradation in Nigeria and not in other countries.
As a cerebral person, Ken
Saro-Wiwa mentioned the names of other prominent people across academics and
corporate Nigeria that he encountered at different point in time. Such names
include- Professors Claude Ake; Chike Obi; Femi Osofisan; Kole Omotoso; Theo
Vincent; Drs. Olu Onagoruwa; Dr. Odili; Yemi
Ogunbiyi; Obi Wali. Others are Uche
Chukwumerije; Bayo Balogun; Nnaemeka Achebe and Rufus Ada George.
All the officers in this book
were acting on the next order from their superiors aka ‘Oga at the Top’. The
use of initiative is rather unpopular among the civil servants. The officer
assigned to manage him, Mr Ogbeifun, had to wait on the orders of the Deputy
Inspector General of Police in charge of FIIB. Subsequently, the invites by the
Inspector General of Police; the meeting with the Head of National Intelligence
Agency, Brigadier-General Halilu Akilu; National Security Adviser,
Major-General Aliyu Mohammed and the final instruction of Augustus Aikhomu to
release him.
Worthy of note is that the family
man in Ken Saro-Wiwa never died in all these struggles. He ‘thought of his
family; father, mother, brothers and sisters… his children who just buried
earlier in the year.’ He still found
time to take his children on holiday and visited them regularly in the United
Kingdom. Equally, he enjoyed the support of his parents and siblings who
visited him in detention and his Mum gave him a delicacy he had not taken in 40
years.
A Month and a Day is a poignant
account of the political war of tyranny, oppression and greed designed to
dispossess the Ogoni people of their rights; their wealth. The struggle for
restoration; a struggle for equity; a challenge of the status quo resonated
throughout the text. He witnessed the efficiency of evil in a country where
virtually nothing worked and all orders were carried out with military precision.
The voice of Ken Saro-Wiwa had never drowned and all efforts are ongoing to
ensure that what he stood for will result into the eventual clean-up of Ogoni
and her environs. The text is a great addition to Prison and Environmental literature.