Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, has criticised
the Nigerian media for continuously
describing as ‘show of shame’ the incident
where some members of the House of
Representatives scaled the gate of the National
Assembly to gain entrance into the complex.
Speaking at a press conference in Lagos,
Tuesday, Mr. Soyinka said that the phrase
ought to be reserved for Suleiman Abba, the
Inspector General of Police.
About 15 members of the Lower House scaled
the fence to gain access into the complex, two
weeks ago, after they were stopped by police
officers.
“Legislators are not elected for their athletic
prowess, and such endeavours should not be
demanded of them,” said Mr. Soyinka, a
professor of Comparative Literature.
“There are even presidents and prime
ministers who were elected despite physical
handicaps. The brain is where it matters, the
vision and commitment to service.”
Mr. Soyinka said that by scaling the National
Assembly gate, the legislators were made to
perform over and beyond the call of the
Olympics.
“I don’t understand why some media have
described their action as a show of shame –
this is a very careless, easily misapplied
designation. The act of scaling gates and walls
to fulfill their duty to the people must be set
down as their finest hour. They must be
applauded, not derided.
“If shame belongs anywhere, it belongs to the
Inspector General of Police and his slavish
adherence to conspiratorial, illegal, and
unconstitutional instructions – to undermine a
democratic structure, and one – to make
matters worse – convoked in response to an
emergency of dire public concern.”
At his last press conference in Abeokuta last
week, Mr. Soyinka, 80, announced that he had
been diagnosed of cancer in December 2013,
adding that the “nuisance” had been
disrupting his normal existence.
But on Tuesday, he was his usual jocular self,
cracking jokes as he entered the venue of the
press event 20 minutes after the scheduled
time.
“Tell me what you are doing about the
electronic media,” he asked jokingly to the
half a dozen journalists seated in the hall.
“This medium of supposed
information is
becoming dangerous.”
Later, he informed the reporters that he would
be handing them written texts of his speech
“personally” to avoid an impostor handing
them copies of what he never said when they
leave the hall.
At the end of the question and answer
session, he issued an apology: “Sorry, there is
no brown envelope. But I have drinks.”
The writer and poet, however, did not mince
words when he spoke about the menace of
the Boko Haram terrorist group and its danger
to Nigeria’s corporate existence.
“The cliché ‘heating up the polity’ may grate
the ear-drums with its banality but I think
that we have a right to demand of a leader
not to stoke up the furnace in which events
have cast its citizens. Every day records a new
violation of our humanity,” said Mr. Soyinka.
“The atrocious targeting of the great mosque
of Kano has rendered any lingering doubt of
impending national imposition an invitation
for collective suicide, preferably through
piecemeal dismemberment. The theories of
cause and effect can wait, or continue – it
does not matter – the omniscient in such
matters continue to pontificate, some of them
blithely forgetting that they indeed
contributed to policies that landed us in this
brutal cleft.”
Mr. Soyinka also said that President
Jonathan’s recent visit to the Obafemi
Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, underlined his
total alienation from the reality that has
engulfed the nation.
“Yes, political campaigns are part and parcel
of the bloodline of the democratic process. We
know that they never stop,” he said.
“However, that a national leader should go
campaigning on the platform of ethnic support
at a time when priorities dictate a united
national engagement for survival, is a
grotesque undertaking that was tragically
rebuked in the massacre of worshippers and
desecration of the Kano mosques, almost
simultaneously with the alienated gathering
of selected crowned heads and journeymen at
the OAU campus, a macabre echo of
Balthazar’s feast.
“Long before Nyanya, long before Chibok, long
before the mildest of the now innumerable
violations of our basic right to existing as free
citizens, the march of a nation towards
implosion has dominated the landscape, but
an obsession with the pettiness of power has
obscured remedial vision and thus, the
creative options constantly open to any
prescient leadership.”
Mr. Soyinka said that the call for Nigerians to
be vigilant is real and urgent, adding that
there is a need to clip the wings of the
predatory bird.
“Let no one cry anarchy when the people
respond to that historic cry of liberation, to
which one leader after another – the most
recent being the Emirates of Kano and the
Ulama leader Yahaya Jingir – have felt moved
to urge upon their people.”
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