APPENDIX 2 - INTERVIEWS

Summary

For the empirical portions of this book, particularly Chapter 3, I spoke with more than 60 people in North America and Europe, in some cases multiple times, primarily during 1996–98 but also in later years. For the Nigerian case study, my primary target was the MOSOP leadership, who I identified through a review of American, European, and Nigerian periodicals as well as other published materials, including most importantly Ken Saro-Wiwa's illuminating A Month and a Day: A Detention Diary. After contacting this group of leaders by telephone or letter, I used a “snowball” technique to expand my list, identifying other subjects through an initial interview round, a review of newly collected primary documents, or by chance presence at an interview location. (However, I conducted all interviews with individual subjects.) In several instances, I met with newly identified subjects when I attended MOSOP strategy meetings, public discussions, or other events in the United States and Europe. When I conducted the bulk of my interviews, during 1996–98, the height of the brutal dictatorship of Sani Abacha, most of the still-living MOSOP leadership were exiled in Europe or North America, where I met with them. I interviewed primarily men but also several women prominent in the movement. The interviews are of elites involved in MOSOP's international strategizing rather than the Ogoni masses, and they include highly educated MOSOP leaders, some of them relatives of Ken Saro-Wiwa.