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SOCIAL ACTIVIST

Ken Saro-Wiwa

1941 - 1995

Photo of Ken Saro-Wiwa

Icon of person Ken Saro-Wiwa

Kenule Beeson "Ken" Saro-Wiwa (10 October 1941 – 10 November 1995) was a Nigerian writer, television producer, and environmental activist. Saro-Wiwa was a member of the Ogoni people, an ethnic minority in Nigeria whose homeland, Ogoniland, in the Niger Delta, has been targeted for crude oil extraction since the 1950s and has suffered extreme environmental damage from decades of indiscriminate petroleum waste dumping.Initially as a spokesperson, and then as the president, of the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), Saro-Wiwa led a nonviolent campaign against environmental degradation of the land and waters of Ogoniland by the operations of the multinational petroleum industry, especially the Royal Dutch Shell company. He criticized the Nigerian government for its reluctance to enforce environmental regulations on the foreign petroleum companies operating in the area.At the peak of his non-violent campaign, he was tried by a special military tribunal for allegedly masterminding the murder of Ogoni chiefs at a pro-government meeting, and hanged in 1995 by the military dictatorship of General Sani Abacha. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Ken Saro-Wiwa has received more than 1,100,734 page views. His biography is available in 38 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 35 in 2019). Ken Saro-Wiwa is the 274th most popular social activist (down from 262nd in 2019), the 13th most popular biography from Nigeria and the most popular Nigerian Social Activist.

Memorability Metrics

  • 1.1M

    Page Views (PV)

  • 53.32

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 38

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 3.26

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 4.30

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Page views of Ken Saro-Wiwas by language


Among SOCIAL ACTIVISTS

Among social activists, Ken Saro-Wiwa ranks 274 out of 538Before him are Viktors Arājs, M. N. Roy, Baba Amte, Eunus, Leymah Gbowee, and Joseph von Sonnenfels. After him are Carlo Cafiero, Li Hongzhi, Fra Diavolo, Eglantyne Jebb, Josephine Butler, and Harilal Gandhi.

Most Popular Social Activists in Wikipedia

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Contemporaries

Among people born in 1941, Ken Saro-Wiwa ranks 203Before him are Fritz Wepper, Roberto Calasso, Leon Russom, Eugène Terre'Blanche, George P. Cosmatos, and Wilson Pickett. After him are Ghena Dimitrova, Andrés García, Sonny Landham, Robert Foxworth, Lynne Cheney, and Júlia Várady. Among people deceased in 1995, Ken Saro-Wiwa ranks 109Before him are Viktoria Brezhneva, Dirceu, Rudolf Peierls, André Frossard, Isang Yun, and Vladimír Dzurilla. After him are Edith Pargeter, Georgy Beregovoy, Srinagarindra, Robert Monroe, Jerry Garcia, and Józef Maria Bocheński.

Others Born in 1941

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Others Deceased in 1995

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In Nigeria

Among people born in Nigeria, Ken Saro-Wiwa ranks 13 out of 236Before him are Sade (1959), Usman dan Fodio (1754), Olaudah Equiano (1745), Hakeem Olajuwon (1963), Olusegun Obasanjo (1937), and Jay-Jay Okocha (1973). After him are Tony Allen (1940), Sani Abacha (1943), Francis Arinze (1932), Umaru Musa Yar'Adua (1951), Goodluck Jonathan (1957), and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977).

Among SOCIAL ACTIVISTS In Nigeria

Among social activists born in Nigeria, Ken Saro-Wiwa ranks 1