The Nation Newspaper

Tag: Soyinka

  • Soyinka to teach in South Africa

    Soyinka to teach in South Africa

    Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka is taking up a post as visiting professor at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa.

    The 83-year-old playwright and author told students and journalists at the South African university at the weekend that being an itinerant teacher has become “a way of life” and that the benefit of encountering different cultures during his travels is that “one does not stagnate.”

    Soyinka said  he and his Johannesburg students might create a play together, as well as discuss history and international relations along with literature.

    Soyinka drew laughter after saying: “What I don’t know, I’ll pretend that I know.”

    The university says it hopes Soyinka’s periodic presence on campus will boost plans to set up a creative writing programme.

     

  • Mandela personified humanism, says Soyinka

    Mandela personified humanism, says Soyinka

    The late President Nelson Mandela’s resilence and his commitment to peace, reconciliation and social justice are values that endeared him to people, Nobel Llaureate Prof. Wole Soyinka said yesterday.

    The literary giant said Mandela’s name inspired doggedness and compassion, adding that his principles will remain a guide for people seeking freedom from oppression.

    Soyinka spoke at an event with the theme: Mandela’s vision of end to poverty: Reflection and way forward, organised by the United Nations Information Centre (UNIC) in collaboration with the United Nations Association of Nigeria to mark the Nelson Mandela International Day.

    The dramatist said the late anti-apartheid icon personified the idea of humanism. He added that Mandela’s selflessness, generosity and sense of humour gave him out as an embodiment of state of total freedom for which every human being crave to attain; a state the Nobel Laureate described as Mandeland.

    He said: “Nelson Mandela was stubborn but he was not dogmatic. His stubbornness and determination make me conclude that this man embodied a certain Never-Never Land, an imaginary perfect world which all of us strive to attain.

    “We cannot attaint this perfect land, but it is sufficient to know that Mandeland exists and we must internalise this Mandeland and become citizens of Mandela’s own Never-Never Land.”

    The playwright said the best tribute anyone could pay to the memory of the late Mandela was to promote the values and ideas, which he represented.

    Soyinka added that Mandela’s resolve to entrench peace and unity among all ethnic nationalities in post-apartheid era permanently healed the wounds of oppression to which South Africans were subjected.

    Explaining why the United Nations got involved in marking Nelson Mandela International Day yearly, the UNIC Information Officer, Dr. Oluseyi Soremekun, who represented the UN secretary general, said the first black South African president’s dedication to the culture of freedom and conflict resolution prompted the UN General Assembly to pass a resolution in recognition of Mandela’s principle.

    Soremekun said the theme of the event was in line with the first item of the UN’s Sustainable Developmental Goals (SDGs), which is to end poverty.

    He said: “We must seek to continue building on Mandela’s legacy of fighting poverty through commitment to ensuring social and economic inclusion in the society. Madiba was a model global citizen, whose example continues to guide people towards building a just and peaceful world.”

    Former Nigeria’s Ambassador to Australia Ayo Olukanni, noted the role played by Nigerian youths and students in fighting the apartheid regime in South Africa, describing the effort as “worthy”. He called for mass action against poverty, saying the effective implementation of the SDGs would promote all ideals espoused by the late Mandela.

    The Consul-General of South Africa High Commission in Lagos Mr. Darkey Africa, who described poverty as a man-made phenomenon, said Mandela’s struggle would not be in vain if governments of African countries initiate sustainable programmes against poverty and conflicts.

    The event featured discussion and performance of South African cultural dance.

  • Nigeria is negotiable, say Soyinka, Dickson, others

    Nigeria is negotiable, say Soyinka, Dickson, others

    Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, Governor of Bayelsa State, Mr. Seriake Dickson and other notable literary icons said on Friday that Nigeria is negotiable.

    They all agreed that the country should not break up but could be renegotiated to decentralize power and give states more effective and efficient control of their resources.

    In a workshop titled: “A day with the Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka and Ijaw literary icons,” held at the Ijaw National Academy (INA), Kaiama, Kolokuma-Opokuma local government area of Bayelsa State, they affirmed that the people should negotiate many knotty developmental issues bugging down the country.

    Dickson, as part of his efforts to challenge and motivate the students of NIA, one of the 15 boarding secondary schools built by his administration, brought Soyinka and other celebrated Ijaw literary giants to speak to the students.

    Notable Ijaw icons, who attended the programme, are Prof. John Pepper Clark, 96-year-old Dr. Gabriel Okara, said to be the oldest poet in Africa and a foremost historian, Prof. Ebiegberi Joe Alagoa.

    The event, which witnessed performances of poems written by Soyinka, Clark and Okara, was also attended by the Deputy Governor of the state, Rear Admiral John Jonah (retd), Dickson’s wife, Rachel, lawmakers, traditional rulers, cabinet members and celebrated authors, under the auspices of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA).

    Responding to questions on agitations in the country, Soyinka, said people are mixing up and confusing the argument, adding that some politicians are sounding hypocritical, dogmatic and dictatorial each time they say Nigerian unity is not negotiable.

    He said: “That for me is a falsity. Anything is negotiable. The right of people to determine their future is what is non-negotiable. Most nations came to be through negotiation.

    “Sometimes, when people say negotiate, what they really mean is restructure. What the question should be is, should Nigeria break-up? An answer to that is no. But, please don’t tell me that the Nigeria as it stands is non-negotiable.

    “For me it is a fallacy. The nation has got to be negotiated. Negotiation includes ensuring that there is no marginalisation. Negotiation has to do with control of resources.

    “Negotiation has to do with restructuring the nation in a way in which the components are not feeding an over-bloated centre to the detriment of their own development.

    “So, Nigeria is negotiable. But the language we should use is what are you willing to sacrifice, what effort are you willing to make to ensure that Nigeria remains intact? That is a citizen question.”

    Also responding to the question, Dickson aligned himself with Soyinka’s submissions and asked his people to feel free without fear of intimidation to interrogate every notion.

    He said the Niger Delta region had funded the Nigerian project for over 61 years, insisting that staying together as one Nigeria is desirable.

    Dickson said: “I believe that if you ask the question whether Nigeria should continue to exist as a united country, the answer you will get from the majority is yes. I believe that the continuous existence of our nation as an indivisible entity is desirable.

    “There is a very strong case to make for that. After all you and I, our people have been funding the Nigerian experiment for the last 61 years. From your backyards, they carve out portions of land and call it in Abuja and Lagos and other capitals of the world, they call it oil blocks.”

  • Soyinka: Back to the cactus patch

    IBA- For Those Who Went Before”, the preamble to the memoir of Prof. Wole Soyinka, You Must Set Forth At Dawn, is a narration of the author’s sombre cogitations while aboard a Lufthansa Airlines destined to swing over the old city of Lagos after five years of exile imposed on the playwright by the late ghoul, Sanni Abacha.

    I had done a full review of the autobiography – which was an exulting experience – a decade ago. I am usually intrigued by a man that has expended the better part of his life on the crusade to see Nigeria emerge an egalitarian society. He is not alone on this road but has a slant to his activism – an intellectual of first magnitude and international figure.

    Soyinka is a fecund and profound writer. I confess, I love his political works. So, I have returned to the memoir, this time not with the eye of a reviewer but simply to appreciate this literary and political work and share the experience with the reading public.

    A poignant story of serial losses interspersed with brief but subdued hopes, this preamble chapter grips your soul on the burdens of grief, loneliness, empathy, vacation of natural habitat, of abandoned projects, orphanage, guilt, untimely death and forlorn hope that the author had carried in the five years of peripatetic existence in exile. And here was “The same white-haired monster, that same WANTED man with a price on his head, hunted the world over, who is headed home, steadily lubricated from the aircraft’s generous bar… Perhaps I am just a disembodied self usurping my body, strapped into a business-class seat in the plane, being borne to my designated burial ground – the cactus patch in the grounds of my home in Abeokuta.”

    A man locked in a conversation with himself, Soyinka’s heart sank as he recalled the parallel between this return from exile and that of his soul-mate twelve years earlier. It was that same Lufthansa flight that bore the still form of Femi Johnson from Wiesbaden, Germany accompanied by the author, on whose shoulder it unexpectedly but ultimately fell to end “the unfathomable conspiracy to leave him in that foreign land like a stray without ties of family and friends.”

    That remembrance also set in motion the pangs of other losses while the activist was abroad. His compeer, Ojetunde Aboyade – former VC of UNIFE, now OAU – had equally paid the debt of nature. “He was one of the breed of tireless intellectual sparring partners, cunning at fashioning theoretical propositions that were guaranteed to provoke you  and keep you in animated debate until lunch dissolved into dinner, and then, late supper… No doubt, the human landscape that I left behind had altered irreversibly.”

    Even more haunting was the murder of M.K.O. Abiola, the mystery which only the then United States’ officials, Thomas Pickering and Susan Rice could explain: your host – the object of your visit – was served a cup of tea before your very eyes and there and then collapsed in your presence! The murderous plot did reach Soyinka through their ever reliable Aso Rock source. “It was all too late however, Abiola was already dying, his organs weakened by a devilish regimen of slow poisoning.” That was no doubt a lamentable denouement. Gen Abacha, the ‘Butcher of Abuja’ had, allegedly, slumped in the arms of one of his Indian concubines  and the coast seemed clear for the imminent release of Abiola and resolution of the political crisis in which he was bound to play a major role. “Robbed of victory, imprisoned and isolated from human contact for nearly four years and then, on the eve of his second victory.. .- to end up – wasted!”  A ‘lingering cruelty’ that must be!

    The period of Soyinka’s exile also marked the epoch of repression only paralleled in history by Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Serial murder and incarceration of the opponents of the Fuhrer including journalists by the regime’s Gestapo. The era also marked the beginning of guerrilla journalism, which began before the dissident’s vacation of his cactus patch in Abeokuta.

    As the homecomer’s mind went back and forth, he remembered some of those hit and run headlines and victims of their purveyors – TELL, THE NEWS, TEMPO, etc: SANNI ABACHA BARES HIS FANGS; WHO KILLED BAGAUDA KALTHO?; SCANDALS ROCK ASO ROCK; ABACHA AGENTS ON RAMPAGE: MOTHER KILLED, ELEVEN YEAR-OLD HELD HOSTAGE IN POLICE CELL…!

    Mr. Soyinka did not rule out the possibility of his being murdered abroad by the agents of Abacha. He might not have the fortunes of returning home to his hunting forays or his amateurish viniculture experience.  Femi is gone. Oje is gone. Essay – the author’s father – had died while in exile, avoiding the jackboots of Gowon. Wild Christian – his mother – was equally no more. Even the seed of Essay Foundation might never fructify and his uncompleted house might die a hovel. But one thing MUST NEVER HAPPEN. “Agitated by the thought that some misguided friends or family would take my remains to Nigeria, I announced publicly that, if the worst happened, I did not want Abacha’s triumphant feet galumphing over my body, and would settle for a surrogate earth of Jamaica. And I began preparations to buy a piece of land in Bekuta.”

    Bekuta was a settlement of slave descendants from Abeokuta. But the matriarch, the only survivor of the original settlers that kept Egba spirit alive in distant Jamaica had passed on in the course of time and so were the festivals and mores that would leave any visitor from home (Nigeria) with mixed feelings. The elements had taken a cruel toll on the out-of-the-way village – finally breaking the spirit of Bekuta – thus dashing the activist hope of sleeping with his ancestors in distant Jamaica if the worst did happen. “Since hoping to find another Bekuta outside Nigeria was stretching the law of probability beyond limits, my mission in exile became even more personalized – to explore every second towards the retrieval of my cactus patch, but purged definitely of a tyrant’s triumphalist tread.”

    The worst did not happen. Soyinka is back to his cactus patch in Abeokuta, and still kicking at 83. Congratulations sir.

     

    • Soyombo, author and public affairs commentator, sent this piece via densityshow@yahoo.com
  • Soyinka Cultural Exchange Programme kicks off today

    Soyinka Cultural Exchange Programme kicks off today

    The yearly Wole Soyinka International Cultural Exchange Project (WSICE 2017) will hold from today to July 15 in Abeokuta, Ogun State.

    According to the organisers, the theme, Intolerance: the burden of our moral and national conscience, is  premised on the conviction that “intolerance in all its ramifications (political, religious, ethnic/tribal, cultural etc.) destroys the very fabric of our humanity, reduces us as human beings, upstages our moral conscience and counteracts our claim of desiring a community of civilised people”.

    The essay contest will feature 83 pupils who will write on the topic — In a reality Television-like setting.

    Managing Director, Zmirage, Alhaji Teju Kareem said: “Our aim this year is to explore in totality, with the help of the young minds in our midst, the reasons for intolerance and ways to stop it from destroying our attempt at nation building”.

    Entries are being collected from senior secondary schools around the country for the essay competition. All submitted entries will be marked, and the 83 students with the highest scoring essays will be invited for the final competition holding on July 13 at the June 12 Cultural Centre, Kuto, Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital.

    Also, 1000 pupils from Ogun  schools will join the 83 for a workshop where the pupils will be introduced to various creative skills on July 14. They will also be given opportunity to showcase their individual talents and skills during the workshop.

    A tour of the Obasanjo Presidential Library in Abeokuta and the famous Olumo Rock from where the ancient city got its name has been scheduled, as well as a movie screening to thrill the pupils.

    Governor Ibikunle Amosun will host the pupils on Friday, where the results of the final essay competition will be announced, and awards and certificates will be given to all participants.

    Thepupils will also visit Prof. Wole Soyinka at his country home in the Ijegba Forest of Abeokuta, where they will have an encounter with the Nobel laureate, whose distinguished personality and accomplishments as a global citizen and eminent promoter of the good of humanity inspired the project.

    This is a mentoring session that will mark a highpoint of events for the pupils as they can ask the Nobel laureate any question about his life, career and situations in the local and global politics.

  • Soyinka wants EFCC to prosecute opposers of anti-graft war

    Soyinka wants EFCC to prosecute opposers of anti-graft war

    Nobel laureate Prof Wole Soyinka, yesterday in Lagos, called for the prosecution of those he described as detractors in the fight against corruption in the country.

    He made the call at the opening of his Vision of the Child Art Exhibition, 2017 edition, at Freedom Park, Lagos with the theme: Enhance the Heritage; Advance the Future, in celebrating Lagos at 50.

    He said that most times, the anti-corruption agency was sent on the wrong track or wild goose chase, resulting to no prosecution.

    “When we talk about corruption, is it not time we legislate against detractors, who deliberately create distraction. Say for instance, the money just found in Lagos.

    ”One governor claimed that the money belongs to his state government, claiming a proceed from the sale of some turbines and so on.

    ”It is a criminal act of distraction. He knew very well that he was lying, that the money was not his, but belongs to someone else.

    ”Obviously, acting in the interest of those accused of corruption that to me, is connivance and collaboration with corrupt people.

    ”I think such people should be criminalised by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC),” he said.

    Soyinka, who commended the art works of the children, expressed the hope that with children exposing the corruption acts of the adults Nigeria would be in for better days.

    The Acting Chairman of EFCC, Mr Ibrahim Magu, said the commission’s operation was not limited to investigation and prosecution of offenders, but also to enlighten the public on the dangers of corruption.

    He said the painting exhibition was one way to educate and enlighten people about corruption, stressing that the paintings exposed some ways in which adults were involved in corrupt practices.

    “My views of the Nigerian child, from the across the plains, the hills, the forests and the swamps of Nigeria are those of innocence and boundless creativity.

    ”However, like most of the older generation, many of our youths seem also to be trapped in cocoons of corruption, which we have built around them.

    “However, Professor Soyinka’s “Vision of the Child” project and the sheer breadth and depth of these paintings by these youngsters, demonstrate very well that our children have an acute awareness of what is going on around them and are breaking free of the shackles of corruption.

    “They also show the determination of the younger generation for their voices to be heard. The uncomfortable questions they are asking us are; how and why did we allow this beautiful country to be turned into the cesspit of corruption?

    “These paintings speak to all strata of our society and to every flank of the war against corruption and the common message I see running through all of them is: we will never give up on the ideals of a just and equitable society.

    “The vision I see so eloquently expressed in these wonderful pieces of art is that of the irrepressible Nigerian spirit, refusing to be put down and reaching out for the Nigeria of our collective dreams: the Nigeria where our commonwealth is used for our common good and not looted by a few greedy, self-centred lot.

    “I can confirm to you that corruption is already fighting back. But, even though massive resources have been deployed to fight back at EFCC, we draw strength and encouragement to carry on from the likes of these children and Prof Wole Soyinka.

    ”We draw the courage to soldier on from millions of ordinary Nigerians whose desires are for equity and social justice,” he said.

    Magu said that the EFCC was not personal in the discharge of its mandate; stressing that its personnel only fear God, with the guiding principles by the Rule of Law and the overriding interest of the country.

    According to the News Agency of Nigeria, 38 students selected from different schools, participated in literary and painting works at the exhibition.

     

  • Soyinka to Buhari: Declare your health status now

    Soyinka to Buhari: Declare your health status now

    Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka wants President Muhammadu Buhari to declare his health status immediately in order to put a stop to speculations and the attendant political manipulations.

    “Why is the President hiding his state of health? He’s supposed to understand he’s public property. Me I’m still private property, that’s why I’m not in Aso Rock,” Soyinka declared yesterday in Lagos.

    He spoke on the theme Sacred cow.

    He added: “Once you are in Aso Rock, or you occupy a similar position, you have a responsibility to come out frankly to your citizens.

    “Guarding your state of health like Donald Trump is guarding his tax returns is not what we expect from a Nigerian president.”

    Presidency officials declined to respond to Soyinka’s call when contacted yesterday.

    A Presidency source said it was not the first time Soyinka was making the demand and that since the Presidency didn’t react the first time, it would not react now.

    The source, who pleaded anonymity because he was not authorised to speak on the matter, said: “Your story can go without the reaction of the Presidency.

    “The Presidency did not react the first time and may not react this time around.”

    Soyinka also raised the alarm that the security of his Abeokuta country home was recently breached by Fulani herdsmen for the second time.

    He branded the invasion as an act of provocation but said it had been reported to the police and the Alake of Egbaland, Oba Gbadebo Adedotun.

    According to Soyinka, the herdsmen who also invaded the farms of his neighbours recently, came right to his doorstep and a brand new way sliced into his sanctuary and ecological preserve.

    He described the invasion as rampaging impunity, noting that “we are living in a very dangerous time. The herdsmen made me convinced that it is a deliberate act of provocation.

    “I don’t believe in conspiracy theory but the incidences that have taken place in the sanctuary are very alarming. The police have the records,” he said.

    He recalled clashes between the herdsmen and farmers in the area and said that each time the police chased the herdsmen away, they would find a way to return.

    His words: “They do not have respect for human life. They used human beings for suicidal bombing. Why should they not use cows as suicide bombers?

    “…I see no other interpretation to all of this than a movement to enslave the citizens of the country and show that they are masters of the land. They are camping not as peaceful neighbours but as conquerors. One has the right to assume that any cow that comes right to one’s doorstep is a suicidal bomber.”

    Soyinka is unhappy that the security agencies are shirking their responsibility of protecting the citizens who are now left to look after their safety.

    He asked Nigerians to wake up the nation’s leadership on life and death issues especially on one’s land.

    He said: “Herdsmen are worse than Boko Haram. Some kind of action is required, maybe declare a day of beef boycott to compel the leadership to take holistic action.”

    On the plan by the government to create a grazing corridor for herdsmen, he said:”Creating corridor for cattle grazing will compound the problem, I do not think that is the solution,” adding that creating ranches for the herdsmen could be part of the solution.

    Herdsmen had last year attacked Soyinka’s home while he was away abroad.

    He had said then that he returned from a trip outside the country only to “find that my home ground had been invaded, and a brand-new ‘Appian way’ sliced through my sanctuary.”

    On his US green card issue, he said he is done with it and completed all formalities at the US Embassy, Lagos where he was issued a non-immigrant visa that enables him travel to US when he desires.

    “Since October last year, I have been in and out of US six times using the non-immigrant visa,” he said.

    The president’s health status featured at a separate forum in Lagos yesterday with his Special Adviser on Media and Publicity,Mr.Adesina saying :“There is no need for apprehension.”

    Adesina spoke to reporters on the sidelines of the of the launch of the book Against The Run of Play  written by Olusegun Adeniyi, chairman of THISDAY editorial board.

    “God spared the president the first time. Remember he said that he has never been as ill as he was before,” he said.

    “ The same God that spared him will also ensure that he returns to full health. Nigerians prayed and God answered, Nigerians are still praying and God will still answer.”

    Asked to respond to calls by some Nigerians that Buhari should resign on health ground,Adesina said the opinions of a few people demanding the president’s  resignation could not,  in anyway, override the verdict of the 15million Nigerians that elected him into office.

    But he conceded  while the Buhari should  resign agitators have a right to their opinion.

    “Saying the president should resign is an opinion but don’t forget that 15 million people elected the president so if one or two people express their opinion, will their opinion override that of 15 million people that voted for him?” he said.

    “Those who are expressing their opinion have rights to their opinion.”

  • Soyinka mourns Walcott

    Soyinka mourns Walcott

    Nobel laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka yesterday mourned a Caribbean poet, Derek Walcott.

    In a statement titled: ‘Derek Walcott embarks on the eternal sea’, Soyinka wrote: “Derek Walcott was the lyrical heart of the Caribbean, yet wide and profound as the sea that washed his island shores. I visited him at his home, envied his splendid isolation and affinity with the sea. He had a small eyrie where he shut out the world, wrote and painted the crags and iconic promontories that jutted out of the waters, seeming to duplicate his lone splendour amidst the restless sea.

    “We have sailed and picnicked together through the stunning grottos that lie hidden in the Caribbean. He railed and lamented with us under our recurrent cycle of brutal and incontinent misrule of dictators, joined in activities against our seeming curse. Not many people know this, his constant bewilderment at the irony of replication of Master-Slave relationship that took his ancestors to the Caribbean, now mimicked by black overlords. Yet he never lost his interior call of the universal, and of history, as captured so magisterially in his grand oeuvre, Omeros. Derek was one of the history driven lyrical kind..

    “It is no partisan or excess zeal that prompts me, at every opportunity,  to claim Derek Walcott as one of the greatest poets, in any language or culture, of the twentieth century. Derek had a great feel for Nature and History, within whose matrix he so lyrically situated and wove his island tapestry.. A mordant wit, even sometimes prankster, Derek was unpretentiously an aristocrat of letters. His Muse was the sea, but he celebrated his continent of ancestry, Africa, as his rightful bequest, without sentiment, and without blindness.

    “The sadness of parochial literacy on this vast continent comes from the presumption that affinity between writers and their works must be found and expressed in the narrowness of geographic neighbourliness. Those who wish to speak knowledgeably of the reaches of African Literature, should learn to look beyond saline waters, and dialogue with the spirit of Derek Walcott.. He is alive, remains alive, and keeps the universal  lure of literature alive.”

  • Police shouldn’t abridge Nigerians’ right to protest, says Soyinka

    Police shouldn’t abridge Nigerians’ right to protest, says Soyinka

    Nobel laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka yesterday berated the Police for attempting to stifle the planned nationwide protest slated for today against policies of the President Muhammadu Buhari administration which are causing hardship to the people.

    He advised the police not to abridge the right of Nigerians to embark on the planned nationwide protest, describing the attempt by the police “as a huge disappointment, a disservice to the cause of democracy”.

    Hip-pop artiste Innocent Idibia, also known as 2Baba, who was at the vanguard of the protest, called it off citing “security challenges”.

    In a statement yesterday and titled, “Again at risk-The rights of lawful assemblage”, Prof. Soyinka said he has sent a message to the inspector general of police (IGP), through the Lagos State Police commissioner, urging him to respect and safeguard the constitutional rights of the people to freedom of expression, adding, “I hope that, even at this eleventh hour, legality and the democratic imperative will prevail”.

    Soyinka noted that from the beginning, the organisers had cited quite an extensive list of  areas of concern and demands for urgent attention from the Buhari administration.

    “I do not know of any citizens of civilized community who do not subscribe to the fundamental right of the freedom of expression in any form, as long as it is peaceful, and non-injurious to humanity”, he said.

    The Nobel laureate said he found “the Police attempt to reverse the hands of the democratic clock  more appalling at a time when open demonstrations are taking place all over the world against the policies of a recently elected president of the United States, whose democratic formula this nation allegedly serves as Nigeria’s adopted model. Across numerous states of that federated nation, ongoing at this very moment, is the public expression of rejection of a president’s policy that has also pitted the Executive against the judiciary. We have heard of no preventive action by the police, nor arrests of demonstrators”.

    He recalled that “efforts, both under military and civilian orders, have been made in the past to stifle the rights to freedom of expression by Nigerian governments including those of Muhammadu Buhari, Ibrahim Babangida, Olusegun Obasanjo, Sanni Abacha, Goodluck Jonathan….and now again, Buhari? These efforts have been, and will always be resisted. It is a moral issue, as old as settled humanity. It has been settled in other parts of the world. Nigeria cannot be an exception, not as long as her citizens refuse to accept the designation of second, even third-rate citizens”.

    Soyinka described the latest attempt by the police to stifle the planned protest “as a deep embarrassment, and a national shame”  at a time when one of the largest gatherings of humanity is taking place in one of the former totalitarian states of Eastern Europe – Romania.

    “Its size has been assessed as the largest in former Eastern Europe since the fall of the Berlin wall. It was triggered by the state attempt to water down the criminal code against Corruption, and has has brought out hundreds of thousands of people into the streets and stadia, day after day, until the much awaited announcement of the withdrawal of the obnoxious decree. This should resonate within the current Nigerian governance that has made the anti-corruption crusade its mantra”, he recalled.

    He contended: “The battle for the right of lawful assembly of citizens in any cause, conducted peacefully, has been fought and won several times over. It is time that this contest is gracefully conceded. It must be consolidated by its routineness as a choice of action at the front of any people’s democratic participation.

    “This battle has been won legally, constitutionally, and even morally. It enjoys near global acceptance as one of the means of actualising the protocols of a people’s Fundamental Human Rights,” he added.

  • Obasanjo, Soyinka hail Ooni’s efforts at uniting monarchs

    Obasanjo, Soyinka hail Ooni’s efforts at uniting monarchs

    Former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Nobel laureate Prof Wole Soyinka yesterday hailed the efforts of the Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, in uniting Yoruba traditional rulers.

    They spoke at the Ooni’s one year coronation anniversary and the presentation of a book – “Venerated” – which details his background and  emergence as the Ooni.

    Obasanjo and Soyinka advised the Ooni to ignore comments or moves that could cause disaffection and disunity among the people.

    The former President, who said he had been monitoring the activities of the Ooni since his ascension to the throne,  advised him to take the unification agenda as a key factor for the development of the Yoruba nation.

    According to him, “I have paid keen interest in the unification move of the Ooni since his ascension to the throne.

    “It is commendable. We need someone like the Ooni to ensure that the Yoruba nation remains undivided.”

    Soyinka, who also identified the need for the Yoruba to unite, maintained that one of the controversial matters among Yoruba leaders remained the origin of Ile-Ife.

    He said that anyone, who considered Moremi as a traitor, was not saying the truth.

    His words: “There is controversy about the origin of someone whom we know as the origin of Yoruba race, kingdom, black race and humanity.

    “The controversy may continue for long but the reality is that Kabiyesi, the Ooni of Ife, is above all. Ile-Ife is the cradle of humanity.

    “We know what we know; we know what we accept and believe and that remains the fact. I have just gone to see the statue of Moremi and the controversy on Moremi I have heard.

    “I learnt that some people said Moremi, the heroine, is a traitor. That does not touch any part of reality of what Moremi is or was.

    “And I don’t want you (Ooni) to spend any time or energy at all responding to counter or alternative theories. It is not necessary.

    “The influence of Ile-Ife transcends Nigeria and Africa. If you walk on the streets of Cuba or Brazil, somebody will tap you because they know you are black, they say ‘who are you?’

    “And you say ‘I am Osun, Ogun, Sango’. At the end, they will ask you how is the Ooni? It means the Yoruba race, culture is beyond this environment.”

    The Nobel laureate assured the Ooni of his support, saying, “I can see that you are sent on a mission of the unity of the Yoruba people wherever they are in any part of the world.

    “We promise to work with you to bring that dream to reality.”

    Responding,  Oba Ogunwusi, who emphasised the importance of peace and unity, vowed not to stop his moves to make the Yoruba  one.

    According to him, his first year was focused on tourism, agriculture and youth emancipation.

    He said: “There must be peace in Yoruba land and the entire country.

    “It is when there is peace among Yoruba leaders that we will progress and develop.

    “Our peaceful co-existence is non-negotiable that is why we are preaching peace and I will continue to preach it.

    “We won’t stop working and we will continue to seek partnership with the three tiers of government.”