J. Timothy Hunt

The Globe and Mail’s 8th annual selection of the 100 best and most influential books of 2005 CURRENT AFFAIRS & POLITICS The Politics of Bones: Dr. Owens Wiwa and the Struggle for Nigeria's Oil By J. Timothy Hunt McClelland & Stewart, 389 pages, $36.99 This is a skillfully written book with many strands: the politics of development in an oil-rich nation; the local practices of large multinational companies; the colourful but often violent recent history of Africa's most populous nation; and a story of personal tragedy, flight and survival. The book focuses on Owens Wiwa and his wife, Diana. Wiwa was the brother of Ken Saro-Wiwa, charismatic leader of the Ogoni people, hanged by Sani Abacha's regime in 1995 on murky charges of political murder. — David M. Malone.

The Center for African Studies presents: The Politics of Bones: Dr. Owens Wiwa and the Struggle for Nigeria's Oil by J. Timothy Hunt The gripping story of a people's battle against a corrupt government and a powerful oil company, as well as the current situation of oil in Nigeria, will be discussed by a PANEL OF EXPERTS including the book's author, J. Timothy Hunt (biographer and journalist, recipient of multiple National Magazine awards and the Canada Council Creative Writing Grant), Professor Michael Watts (UC Berkeley, Geography), Anna Zalik (Ciriacy Wanthrup Postdoctoral Fellow, UC Berkeley, Geography) and others. The newly released paperback version, published by McClelland & Stewart, will be available for purchase at the event. Tuesday, September 5th, 2006 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. 150 University Hall, UC Berkeley Campus. Tel: 510-642-8338 Co-sponsored by UC Berkeley's Center for Human Rights

The Politics of Bones reviewed by Matthew Behrens Quill & Quire Magazine G-8 leaders and rock stars quick to deliver facile platitudes about the plight of Africa's poor would do well to read Toronto journalist J. Timothy Hunt 's account of Dr. Owens Wiwa's struggle for justice in Nigeria. Dr. Wiwa, though not as well known as his late brother, Ken Saro-Wiwa, nonetheless played a key role in the struggle of the minority Ogoni people against the environmental and human rights violations of Shell Oil and the Nigerian government in their homeland. Hunt's book reads like a fast-paced thriller as he dissects the Nigerian political environment of the past 40 years and the nonviolent struggle by the Wiwa family to expose and rectify numerous corporate and military abuses. The Wiwas rallied hundreds of thousands of people into political activism, and by doing so became public-enemy number one. The book is also an intensely personal story, one of a family growing up ...

BLOOD FOR OIL By Minister Faust VUE WEEKLY, Edmonton, Alberta Canadian journalist J. Timothy Hunt recounts the story of Nigerian martyr Ken Saro-Wiwa’s 1995 oil-fueled execution through his brother Owens Wiwa in The Politics of Bones On November 10, 1995, Nigerian dictator and Shell Oil ally General Sani Abacha shocked the world by putting Ken Saro-Wiwa to death. Saro-Wiwa’s real crime—along with that of eight co-defendants also killed—was defending the rights of the Ogoni people to live free from their own government’s repression and Shell’s destruction and poisoning of their tiny commonwealth inside Africa’s most populous nation. The best known of the Ogoni martyrs, Saro-Wiwa had made a name for himself as a playwright, television personality and rights activist. But had history slipped down an alternate stream, Saro-Wiwa might have been joined in the death cell by a ninth co-defendant: his own brother, Dr. Owens Wiwa. Owens was born on the same day as his brother, 13 year...

Wiwa's courage The Politics of Bones by J. Timothy Hunt NOW Magazine, Nov 10, 2005 Judicial murder leaves powerful memories in the lands where it is committed. The legal lynching of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists stains the history of Nigeria like an oil slick. Saro-Wiwa, the politician who became famous writing sitcoms for Nigerian television, was hanged in 1995 for daring to stand up to the military junta and to Shell Oil, who had turned his homeland into a polluted wasteland while hoarding the profits. Beside Saro-Wiwa during much of the struggle was his quiet younger brother Owens Wiwa. Timothy Hunt's superb The Politics Of Bones tells the terrible, heroic story of the Ogoni resistance and the dramatic lives of Saro-Wiwa and his brother. It also gives a charming account of the Wiwa family and the close relationship between Ken and Owens, whose final separation is heartbreaking. Saro-Wiwa and the other Ogoni leaders were hanged on trumped-up charge...