*Backs IPOB, others
Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has called on President Muhammadu Buhari, to reveal his health condition, after spending almost two months in the United Kingdom on medical leave.
In an interview with AFP in Paris, at the Paris Book Fair, over the weekend, Soyinka also said that indigenous people had a right to assert themselves as a distinct people, even within a political and geographical zone anywhere in the world.
He said, “He’s ill, there’s no question about that, and I wish for heaven’s sake that people in public positions would just be honest.
“Illness is part of our existence. Buhari owes it to the nation and I don’t know why he and his advisors are being so coy about it.”
Noting that United States President, Donald Trump, exploited “latent xenophobia” to reach the White House, the Nobel laureate said that a people had a right to agitate for self-autonomy within a geographical expression.
This was an obvious reaction to the agitation by the South-East geopolitical zone for the declaration of independent state of Biafra.
He said, “It’s not the real estate for me that defines a nation or a people, no, it’s a history, a culture. What is a crime within an artificial entity like Nigeria? You have states being created, which are not viable.”
Separatist sentiment has grown since the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu, was arrested in October 2015, sparking bloody clashes with security forces.
Soyinka said, “I cannot accept the notion that people have a right to kill other people because they want to assert their identity… It doesn’t cost anything to recognise it.” IPOB had threw its support behind Trump’s presidential campaign, believing that he would recognise its independence movement.
And following British ‘Brexit’ from the European Union last July, IPOB had also pushed for its own exit from the Nigerian nation in what it termed ‘Biafrexit.’
On Trump, Soyinka, who renounced his US green card upon his victory in November over his anti-immigrant rhetoric, said, “He played to a latent xenophobic streak, which exists in all societies including mine,” adding, “When I see that kind of conduct… to gain power, I’m completely revolted.”
The 1996 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, added further, “To me a horrible moment was to watch hundreds of thousands of people actually applauding when Trump uttered these sentiments during the election campaign. “I’m against the erection of walls, especially in people’s minds. I’ve never made any bones about it, whether it’s happening in Nigeria or elsewhere.”
Soyinka recounted the scenario of 1983, when faced with a steep drop in oil prices, the Nigerian government, “to cover up all its problems, decided to expel aliens.”
He said that some two million aliens, mainly from Ghana, were given just a few weeks to leave the country.
“There were hordes of refugees in ramshackle lorries going back to their home countries. Ever since, the chequered jute bag, used by travelers throughout West Africa has been known as the “Ghana Must Go bag,” Soyinka said.
