NOBEL Laureate, Wole Soyinka, has warned the Federal Government to ensure that the Presidential Candidate of the African Democratic Congress in the 2019 election, Obadiah Mailafia, “meets no accident” in the course of the unending interrogation by security operatives over his comments that a northern governor is the Commander of Boko Haram.
Soyinka wondered whether it was Mailafia who constituted a danger to the nation, “or the indicted fanatics of unlimited impunity and callous disregard for humanity.”
“Why the ostentatious pretence of investigative zeal? The man has told you where to look. Well, look in that direction and report back to us,” he said.
He spoke in a statement titled, “Between Divider-in-Law and Divider-in-Chief”, on Tuesday, in reaction to the Presidency’s criticism of former President Olusegun Obasanjo’s comment on the state of the nation.
The nobel laureate said, “Presumably, the ongoing ‘national security’ persecution of Obadiah Mailafia is a sign of national unity? I invite our marionettes to read deeply into history. Oh, excuse me, history has been banned from learning structures, so look not for history books!
“However, straightforward, first-hand testimonies abound, exposing structural flaws, deceits and conspiracies against this presumptive national edifice. They are perpetrated by highly placed servants of the state, some of whom have since risen to even higher national positions.
“When you abolish History in institutions, you open the gates wide for rampaging revisionism, while the same gates are shut against a grasp, however tenuous, of why, for instance, a Mailafia becomes a target of serial interrogations and harassment, rather than those boldly named in his revelations.
“Is it he who constitutes a danger to the nation, or the indicted fanatics of unlimited impunity and callous disregard for humanity? Why the ostentatious pretence of investigative zeal? The man has told you where to look. Well, look in that direction and report back to us!
“In the meantime, however, ensure that he meets with no accident! Still on security: any tear that is shed for the arch-bandit and multiple murderer Akwaza, known as Gana, is an obscenity.”
Soyinka also faulted the killing of a wanted man on his way to surrender, saying, “However, tears of trepidation are falling fast and furious over the conduct of an army that eliminates a captive in cold blood, side-tracking the rationality of professional investigations and legitimate pursuit of felons and other enemies of society.
“The issue here is not one of the appropriateness of a policy of Amnesty – that constitutes a larger debate in its place. The issue here – and a critical one – is that a wanted man, on his way to surrender, has been killed in cold blood.”
He added, “I read yesterday that the Army has followed this up with a demand for the bounty earlier placed by Benue State governor on the head of the WANTED man. However, all reports so far indicate that he was on his way to surrender?
“So, is this bounty demand a joke? An end then to such gallows humour! And certainly not now, not while the nation is freshly reeling from the latest horror of the targeting of unarmed road safety officials, gunned down in cold blood in their commuter bus, and the mass kidnapping of survivors.”
He asked if Nigerians should presume that the surviving casualties of routine duty rosters were also nation-dividers if they screamed out for protection and deplored a breakdown in the entire security architecture of the nation.
“But the fault is not one-sided. Let governors also wake up to their constitutional rights and duties. There are vast areas of those rights that have been trampled upon, usurped for far too long. Forget legislative jamborees of constitution reviews – we have had our fill of them – all the files are gathering dust. It is time for Reparations,” Soyinka declared.
