Ken Saro-Wiwa

Kenule Saro-Wiwa was born in 1941 in Ogoniland in the Niger Delta, one of about half a million people whose land had been drilled for oil since the 1950s. He studied English at the University of Ibadan, held government posts during the civil war, then became a successful businessman and writer. His novel Sozaboy and his television comedy Basi and Company, watched by tens of millions, made him one of Nigeria's best-known authors.

In 1990 he helped found the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People. Ogoniland had produced billions of dollars of oil for Shell and the Nigerian state, and had received in return gas flares, oil spills, and no clean water, electricity or hospitals. The movement's demands were a share of the revenue, an environmental clean-up and political autonomy. In January 1993 some 300,000 Ogoni, more than half the population, marched peacefully. Shell withdrew from Ogoniland that year, blaming the unrest; the military responded with raids on villages.

In May 1994 four conservative Ogoni chiefs were murdered by a mob. Saro-Wiwa, who had been stopped from attending the meeting where it happened, was arrested and charged with incitement. He was tried by a special military tribunal whose fairness was condemned by observers, and hanged in Port Harcourt on 10 November 1995 with eight colleagues. Nigeria was suspended from the Commonwealth.

In 2009 Shell paid 15.5 million dollars to settle a case brought by the families, without admitting liability.