Black Mangrove: The Wiwa Story

Storyline

Black Mangrove opens with nine distraught men standing in the gallows, waiting for an ominous hand signal. When it comes, their hanging is horribly botched. They must be re-executed. Again. And again. The year is 1995. The place is Lagos, Nigeria. When the country's kleptocratic military dictatorship executes nine environmental activists by hanging in 1995, the world gasped in horror... and then moved on. All but one man of purpose and unshakable honor and loyalty: Dr. Owens Wiwa. Among those executed that day was his controversial older brother Ken Saro-Wiwa, a renown writer, TV personality, human rights activist, and charismatic spokesperson of the Ogoni. For years, Ken had been rallying his people against highly corrupt oil extraction in the formerly fertile, now grotesquely polluted Niger Delta, where the roots of endless mangroves intertwined with pipelines snaking their way through riverbanks and villages. Since Ken's arrest, Dr. Wiwa had run a relentless campaign to locate and help his brother, against a brutal regime and the American and European oil conglomerates underwriting it. But despite Owens's valiant attempts to save his brother's life, he ultimately fails. With Ken and other leaders out of the way, the resourceful Dr. Wiwa suddenly finds himself on the government's most-wanted list, alongside his smart, resilient wife Diana. Ultimately crossing the border by foot with their newborn son, the couple escapes first to London and then to Toronto, where they become formidable foes to those responsible for killing Ken and oppressing the Ogoni people. As Nigeria dives into another decade of unspeakable corruption, violence, and greed fueled by small men with big guns, and big men with deep pockets, their voices becomes louder.