Ken Saro-Wiwa

In Ken Saro-Wiwa’s best-known work, Sozaboy: A Novel in Rotten English, the narrator is so confounded by the horror of war that the words of his “rotten english” can barely describe it.

Mr Saro-Wiwa’s execution at the hands of Nigeria’s then government in 1995, aged 54, has become, for many, a symbol of the infliction of military might upon the innocent. His reported last words were: “Lord, take my soul but the struggle continues.”

His execution with a group of other environmental campaigners, on charges of murdering four rival leaders, caused international outrage and led to Nigeria being suspended from the Commonwealth.

A member of the Ogoni people, whose hometown in the Niger Delta has been used for crude oil extraction for over 50 years, Mr Saro-Wiwa was educated in an Anglican home, then Government College Umuahia and the University of Ibadan.

During the Nigerian Civil War, he held a government post as administrator for the port city of Bonny in the Niger Delta, and supported the Nigerian government against the seceding Biafrans. His diaries from this time, On a Darkling Plain, were published, and Sozaboy is set during this war.

After leaving the government’s service, he wrote Basi & Co, an sit com which was once one of Africa’s most popular shows, watched by over 30 million people. Set in Lagos, it often poked fun at Nigerian bureaucrats and the police.

He re-entered politics in the late 1980s when he was appointed by the newly-installed military dictator Ibrahim Babangida to help the country's transition to democracy.

However, he did not last long under the Babangida government and quit, claiming that it was not committed to democracy.

During this time, he helped found the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), which campaigns for more power for the Ogoni people, a fair share of the proceeds of oil extraction, and repair of the damage to Ogoni lands inflicted by oil extraction. He was said to have been offered the post of oil minister in an attempt to get him to stay quiet.

MOSOP championed peaceful protest in the early 1990s, with one series of marches involving around 300,000 Ogoni - more than half the tribe’s entire population.

Yet the movement was not free from violence, and in May 1994, four Ogoni elders who disagreed with some of MOSOP’s ideas were killed at a rally by MOSOP supporters.

Although Mr Saro-Wiwa was not present at the killings – he had actually tried to attend but been turned away by the army – the father of four was tried and sentenced to death.

The execution caused an international outcry, but the military government continued in power for several more years.

Ken Wiwa, his son, a former journalist who now works as a special adviser to the Nigerian government on international affairs, has spearheaded the campaign to sue Shell over allegations that it was somehow complicit in his father’s death.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit against Shell allege that the company used its influence with the Nigerian government to target the MOSOP campaign and Mr Saro-Wiwa. Statements submitted to the court say that Brian Anderson, then managing director of Shell’s Nigerian subsidiary, met with Owens Wiwa, Mr Saro-Wiwa’s brother, and said that he would be released in return for an end to the protests against the company.