NOBEL Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka has berated the Federal Government and the Department of State Security (DSS) over continued detention of the convener of #RevolutionNow, Omoyele Sowore and disobedience of court orders to release him.
In a statement issued on Thursday, Soyinka said the Federal Government and its security agencies would have to detain half of the nation’s population for detaining Sowore based on his call for revolution in the country.
According to the social critic who titled his statement, “Between thuggery and state disobedience,” the “wish for drastic transformation of this nation is staple discourse.”
“Is Sowore Myetti Allah? As for those agencies that actually think to inhibit social revolution by fastening on the alarmist association of the word ‘revolution’, half the citizens of this nation should be in permanent detention,” he said.
“From pulpit to minaret, from clinic to fish market, from student club to motor park, the wish for drastic transformation of this nation is staple discourse.”
He said the discourse should start with the judiciary whose decisions, the literary icon said, affect both society and individuals with such finality, for good or ill.
Citing similar disobedience of court orders by previous administrations since return of democracy in 1999, Soyinka said Nigeria has continued to undergo the chagrin of having the rug pulled from under her feet while waiting on the long queue for judicial redress against the strong-arm culture of the state, as well as unlisted power interests.
“ For instance, Lagos state, the former capital, and still the acknowledged commercial capital of the nation, once found herself denied statutory allocation for several years, despite repeated court declarations that such withholding by the central government was unconstitutional and should be remedied forthwith,” he recalled.
“That president took sadistic pleasure in simply playing deaf. It took his successor to end the abuse and restore the full entitlements of that state, disobedience that went beyond mere churlishness but affected the development and welfare of the indigenes of that state.
“And so on, and on, waiting in vain for that day when the Rule of Law becomes commonplace, and its benefice is not doled out by the drop to famished mendicants.”
Speaking on the similarity between thuggery and court disobedience, he said, both have everything in common.
“They are both Scofflaw manifestations. Unilateral declarations of Supra-Law delusions,” he said.
“One is simply a more structured, more hypocritical version of the other. One knows itself for what it is, while the other tries to camouflage its abnormality under a higher purpose, the more elastic the better . Such is that often specious alibi labeled “national security”.