Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka,
yesterday issued a statement directly at President Goodluck Jonathan,
requesting him to stop the recklessness that is “fast becoming the norm” in the
nation’s governance. The statement was titled ‘Cool it, President Goodluck
Jonathan’.
“The increasing flash points in the nation have reached an
unsustainable level, and responsible governance must accept that it is an
urgent duty to diminish, not increase them,” the statement said. “Even the
notoriously short Nigerian memory remains traumatised by recollection of the
rape of Anambra that was enabled by the connivance of federal might, and the
abandonment of all moral scruples in executive disposition.
“The people of Ogun State were humiliated by the antics of a
power besotted governor, with their elected legislators locked out of the
Assembly for upwards of a year.
“That hideous travesty was again made possible by the abusive
use of the police.
“Even a child in this nation knows that the police derive its
enabling and operational authority from the dictates of the centre. So there
can be no disguising whose will is being executed wherever democratic norms are
flouted and the people’s rights ground to mush under dictatorial heels.
“Before the irretrievable point of escalation is reached, we
have a duty to sound a collective alarm, even without the lessons of past
violations of constitutional rights and apportionments of elected
representatives of the people and their consequences.
“There is an opportunity in Rivers State to break this
spiraling culture of executive impunity – manifested in both subtle and crude
ways – that is fast becoming the norm in a post-military dispensation that
fitfully aspires to be called a democracy.”
Photo Credit: Punch
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