Prof. Wole Soyinka, yesterday Saturday March 1st said he rejected the
centenary award conferred on him by the Federal Government because
late military dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha, was included in the list of
awardees. His statement titled ‘The Canonisation of Terror,’ reads in
part...
“Under that ruler, torture and other forms of barbarism were
enthroned as the norm of governance. Nine Nigerian citizens,
including the writer and environmentalist, Ken Saro-wiwa, were
hanged after a trial that was stomach-churning even by the
most primitive standards of judicial trial, and in defiance of the
intervention of world leadership.
“We are speaking of a man who placed this nation under siege
during an unrelenting reign of terror that is barely different from
the current rampage of Boko Haram. It is this very psychopath
that was recently canonised by the government of Goodluck
Jonathan in commemoration of one hundred years of Nigerian
trauma.”
"What the government of Goodluck Jonathan has done is to
scoop up a century’s accumulated degeneracy in one preeminent
symbol, then place it on a podium for the nation to admire,
emulate and even – worship.
“Such abandonment of moral rigour comes full circle sooner or
later. The survivors of a plague known as Boko Haram, students
in a place of enlightenment and moral instruction, are taken to a
place of healing dedicated to an individual contagion – a
murderer and thief of no redeeming quality known as Sani
Abacha, one whose plunder is still being pursued all over the
world and recovered piecemeal by international consortiums – at
the behest of this same government which sees fit to place him
on the nation’s Roll of Honour!
“I can think of nothing more grotesque and derisive of the
lifetime struggle of several on this list, and their selfless services
to humanity. It all fits. In this nation of portent readers, the
coincidence should not be too difficult to decipher. I reject my
share of this national insult,
Well, u spoke your mind
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