By Ocgereome Nnanna
VERY few of us outside the judicial circles knew the man was still in the service. As soon as he completed his dirty job of condemning Ken Saro-Wiwa, along with eight other Ogoni leaders, Justice Ibrahim Auta rapidly dropped out of sight. He only resurfaced, to the surprise of many, when recently the news hit the airwaves that he was going to be appointed as the Acting Chief Justice of the Federal High Court.

Justice Auta, indeed, did a dirty job for the late General Sani Abacha regime. After the civil war (which pushed the Igbo out of power reckoning in Nigeria) the leaders of the Federal side settled down to enjoy their spoils of victory.

They portrayed the Biafra secession bid as a ploy to corner the oil resources of the former Eastern Region. For their part in isolating Biafra for the blockades which helped in no small measure in achieving victory, the Eastern Minorities were given a number of concessions.

Number one was that their age-long agitation for their own states was granted: South Eastern State (later Cross River, which became Cross River and Akwa Ibom states) and Rivers State (which was later split into Rivers and Bayelsa states). Number two, Port Harcourt was removed from the control of the Igbo through the abandoned property policy and handed over to the Ijaw elite, which continued to dominate it until Bayelsa was created by General Abacha in 1996.

Thirdly, a good number of Ijaw prominent sons and daughters were given plum jobs at the federal level.
The powers that be then descended on Port Harcourt and the Niger Delta. In partnership with the foreign oil conglomerates, they commenced a mindless plunder of the resources of the area, with untold environmental disasters that impoverished the “natives”.

It was not until the late 1980s that some members of the elite from the Niger Delta started to raise their voices against the despoliation of their land. This period coincided with the sudden emergence of powerful mass media organisations founded by Niger Deltans: The Guardian, Vanguard, Newswatch, and much later, The Ray Power/AIT Group, Thisday and so on.

Ogoni, one of the land-based oil producing communities which had a large amount of Shell’s oil infrastructure on their land, formed the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MOSOP) with Dr G. D. Leton as President and Dr Edward Kobani as Vice President. MOSOP soon underwent rapid radicalisation and Ken Saro-Wiwa became the leader.

Wiwa led a number of protest campaigns. MOSOP drew up the Ogoni Bill of Rights, which the increasingly worried ruling class saw as a charter for “secession”. When the Ogoni internal crisis blew up and a mob murdered some of the more moderate Ogoni leaders (the Ogoni Four) such as Kobani, Dr Albert Badey, Theophilus Orage and Samuel Orage, the regime of General Abacha saw an opportunity to settle the Ogoni hash once and for all.

That was when Justice Ibrahim Auta was drafted to head a tribunal which returned the death verdict. Within 48 hours, before the human rights machine around the world could rev to life to push for clemency, Abacha ordered the hanging of the “Ogoni Nine” – Saro-Wiwa, Saturday Dobee, Nordu Eawo, Daniel Gbooko, Paul Levera, Felix Nuate, Baribor Bera, Barinem Biowel and John Kpuine.

You may want to know why and how Chief Odumegwu Ojukwu came into justifying the killing of Wiwa. Wiwa schooled in deep Igboland and was initially part of Biafra. In fact, he was made the Administrator of Bonny by Ojukwu. But when his people decided to dump the secession, Wiwa became an anti-Ojukwu and anti-Igbo campaigner.

He created much bad blood between himself and Igbo people with his writings, especially his book: On A Darkling Plain. But when he became involved in the agitation for Ogoni liberty (which was much like Biafra without arms) he and Ojukwu met at the Mkpoko Igbo Seminar in Enugu in March 1994 as Nigeria prepared for the Constitutional Conferences which Wiwa had intended to attend.

They embraced and reconciled and Wiwa apologised to Ojukwu. But a few days later Wiwa was arrested and put on  trial for murder. As far as Ojukwu was concerned, Wiwa got what he deserved.

Clearly, Auta was a pawn on the oil chessboard; a cat’s paw used to cure an irritation called Saro-Wiwa and thus cow the Niger Deltans back into their old subservient shell. But the intimidation did not work because a couple of years after the Ogoni Nine were hanged, the Ijaws picked up the struggle, this time with arms.

They forced Nigeria to concede the Presidency to the Niger Deltans and listen when they spoke. Wiwa’s blood became the manure that fertilised the soil for the emergence of the Niger Delta as a relevant political power bloc.

But ironically, just as General Olusegun Obasanjo refused to recognise the fact that his presidency was made possible by the martyrdom of Abiola, President Goodluck Jonathan last year ignored the call for the immortalisation of Saro-Wiwa.

The question before us is: Should we allow Justice Auta, after playing the pawn in the murder of Saro-Wiwa, to become the head of the Federal High Court? My answer is simple. After using a rag you must put it out of sight.

When Justice Bassey Ikpeme was used to give a nocturnal injunction to stop the June 12 poll on its eve, she died mysteriously shortly after. After General Babangida used Justice Benedict Okadigbo to send General Zamani Lekwot to the hangman (though he was later pardoned by Abacha) he dropped out of sight. And when Justices Wilson Egbo-Egbo and Stanley Nnaji were used to issue “black market” verdicts they were removed from office.

Justice Ibrahim Auta must be stopped. He will pollute our temple of justice with the stigma of the Ogoni Nine murders.