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| Professor Wole Soyinka |
Nobel Laureate Prof
Soyinka in a piece titled 'The Wages of Impunity' has condemned the recent #bringbackjonathan2015 campaign slogan and
GEJ's recent trip to Chad with Ali Modu Sheriff, who has been accused of
being a Boko Haram sponsor.
In the piece published by Sahara Reporters, Prof Soyinka wrote that he knows Australian hostage negotitaor
Stephen Davis,
stressing that they both worked together under late
President Umaru Musa Yar Adua's regime during the struggle for the
return of peace in the Niger Delta region.
 |
| Dr. Stephen Davis |
He also wrote that he has his own theories regarding how General Ihejirika may have come under Stephen Davis’ searchlight. Find his article below.
The
dancing obscenity of Shekau and his gang of psychopaths and child
abductors, taunting the world, mocking the BRING BACK OUR GIRLS campaign
on internet, finally met its match in Nigeria to inaugurate the week of
September 11 – most appropriately. Shekau’s danse macabre was
surpassed by the unfurling of a political campaign banner that defiled
an entry point into Nigeria’s capital of Abuja. That banner read: BRING
BACK JONATHAN 2015.
President
Jonathan has since disowned all knowledge or complicity in the outrage
but, the damage has been done, the rot in a nation’s collective soul
bared to the world. The very possibility of such a desecration took the
Nigerian nation several notches down in human regard. It confirmed the
very worst of what external observers have concluded and despaired of -
a culture of civic callousness, a coarsening of sensibilities and, a
general human disregard. It affirmed the acceptance, even domination of
lurid practices where children are often victims of unconscionable
abuses including ritual sacrifices, sexual enslavement, and
worse. Spurred by electoral desperation, a bunch of self-seeking morons
and sycophants chose to plumb the abyss of self-degradation and drag the
nation down to their level. It took us to a hitherto unprecedented low
in ethical degeneration. The
bets were placed on whose turn would it be to take the next potshots at
innocent youths in captivity whose society and governance have failed
them and blighted their existence? Would the Chibok girls now provide
standup comic material for the latest staple of Nigerian escapist
diet? Would we now move to a new export commodity in the entertainment
industry named perhaps “Taunt the Victims”?
As
if to confirm all the such surmises, an ex-governor, Sheriff, notorious
throughout the nation – including within security circles as affirmed
in their formal dossiers – as prime suspect in the sponsorship league of
the scourge named Boko Haram, was presented to the world
as a presidential traveling companion. And the speculation became: was
the culture of impunity finally receiving endorsement as a governance
yardstick? Again, Goodluck Jonathan swung into a plausible
explanation: it was Mr. Sheriff who, as friend of the host President
Idris Deby, had traveled ahead to Chad to receive Jonathan as part of
President Deby’s welcome entourage. What, however does
this say of any president? How come it that a suspected affiliate of a
deadly criminal gang, publicly under such ominous cloud, had the
confidence to smuggle himself into the welcoming committee of another
nation, and even appear in audience, to all appearance a co-host with
the president of that nation? Where does the confidence arise in him
that Jonathan would not snub him openly or, after the initial shock,
pull his counterpart, his official host aside and say to him, “Listen,
it’s him, or me.”? So impunity now transcends boundaries, no matter how
heinous the alleged offence?
The
Nigerian president however appeared totally at ease. What the nation
witnessed in the photo-op was an affirmation of a governance principle,
the revelation of a decided frame of mind – with precedents galore.
Goodluck Jonathan has brought back into limelight more political
reprobates – thus attested in criminal courts of law and/or police
investigations – than any other Head of State since the nation’s
independence. It has become a reflex. Those who stuck up the obscene
banner in Abuja had accurately read Jonathan right as a Bring-back
president. They have deduced perhaps that he sees “bringing back” as a
virtue, even an ideology, as the corner stone of governance,
irrespective of what is being brought back. No one quarrels about
bringing back whatever the nation once had and now sorely needs – for
instance, electricity and other elusive items like security, the rule of
law etc. etc. The list is interminable. The nature of what is being
brought back is thus what raises the disquieting questions. It is time
to ask the question: if Ebola were to be eradicated tomorrow, would this government attempt to bring it back?
Well,
while awaiting the Chibok girls, and in that very connection, there is
at least an individual whom the nation needs to bring back, and
urgently. His name is Stephen Davis, the erstwhile negotiator in the oft
aborted efforts to actually bring back the girls. Nigeria
needs him back – no, not back to the physical nation space itself, but
to a Nigerian induced forum, convoked anywhere that will guarantee his
safety and can bring others to join him. I know Stephen Davis, I worked
in the background with him during efforts to resolve the insurrection in
the Delta region under President Shehu Yar’Adua. I have not been
involved in his recent labours for a number of reasons. The most basic
is that my threshold for confronting evil across a table is not as high
as his - thanks, perhaps, to his priestly calling. From
the very outset, in several lectures and other public statements, I have
advocated one response and one response only to the earliest, still
putative depredations of Boko Haram and have decried any proceeding that
smacked of appeasement. There was a time to act – several times when
firm, decisive action, was indicated. There are certain steps which,
when taken, place an aggressor beyond the pale of humanity, when we must
learn to accept that not all who walk on two legs belong to the
community of humans – I view Boko Haram in that light. It is no comfort
to watch events demonstrate again and again that one is proved to be
right.
Thus,
it would be inaccurate to say that I have been detached from the Boko
Haram affliction – very much the contrary. As I revealed in earlier
statements, I have interacted with the late National Security Adviser,
General Azazi, on occasion – among others. I am therefore compelled to
warn that anything that Stephen Davis claims to have uncovered cannot be
dismissed out of hand. It
cannot be wished away by foul-mouthed abuse and cheap attempts to
impugn his integrity – that is an absolute waste of time and effort. Of
the complicity of ex-Governor Sheriff in the parturition of Boko Haram, I
have no doubt whatsoever, and I believe that the evidence is
overwhelming. Femi Falana can safely assume that he has my full backing –
and that of a number of civic organizations – if he is compelled to go
ahead and invoke the legal recourses available to him to force Sheriff’s
prosecution. The evidence in possession of Security Agencies – plus a
number of diplomats in Nigeria – is overwhelming, and all that is left
is to let the man face criminal persecution. It is certain he will also
take many others down with him.
Regarding
General Ihejirika, I have my own theories regarding how he may have
come under Stephen Davis’ searchlight in the first place, ending up on
his list of the inculpated. All I shall propose at this stage is that an
international panel be set up to examine all allegations, irrespective
of status or office of any accused. The unleashing of a viperous cult
like Boko Haram on peaceful citizens qualifies as a crime against
humanity, and deserves that very dimension in its resolution. If a
people must survive, the reign of impunity must end. Truth – in all
available detail – is in the interest, not only of Nigeria, the
sub-region and the continent, but of the international community whose
aid we so belatedly moved to seek. From very early beginnings, we warned
against the mouthing of empty pride to stem a tide that was assuredly
moving to inundate the nation but were dismissed as alarmists. We warned
that the nation had moved into a state of war, and that its people must
be mobilized accordingly – the warnings were disregarded, even as
slaughter surmounted slaughter, entire communities wiped out, and the
battle began to strike into the very heart of governance, but all we
obtained in return was moaning, whining and hand-wringing up and down
the rungs of leadership and governance. But enough of recriminations – at least for now. Later, there must be full accounting.
Finally,
Stephen Davis also mentions a Boko Haram financier within the Nigerian
Central Bank. Independently we are able to give backing to that claim,
even to the extent of naming the individual. In the process of our
enquiries, we solicited the help of a foreign embassy whose government,
we learnt, was actually on the same trail, thanks to its independent
investigation into some money laundering that involved the Central Bank.
That name, we confidently learnt, has also been passed on to President
Jonathan. When he is ready to abandon his accommodating policy towards
the implicated, even the criminalized, an attitude that owes so much to
re-election desperation, when he moves from a passive “letting the law
to take its course” to galvanizing the law to take its course, we shall
gladly supply that name.
In
the meantime however, as we twiddle our thumbs, wondering when and how
this nightmare will end, and time rapidly runs out, I have only one
admonition for the man to whom so much has been given, but who is now
caught in the depressing spiral of diminishing returns: “Bring Back Our
Honour.”
Wole Soyinka
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