Soyinka Lamblast Ife Indigene’s Protest

Prof. Wole Soyinka

Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has decried the protests by some Ile Ife indigenes over the appointment of Prof. Adebayo Bamire as Vice Chancellor of the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU).

He lambasted the protesters,  saying Ile Ife people ought to have denounced the protesters for such “crazy”  agitation.

The protesters expressed anger that an indigene of Ile-Ife was not appointed OAU VC.

Soyinka spoke at a lecture titled:  The Politics of Black Intellection and Creativity, at the University of Pennsylvania,  United States on Tuesday. His lecture was the first of the newly inaugurated Distinguished Lecture in African Studies.

Traditional religious worshippers, dressed in white attire with other paraphernalia on Monday carried out fetish sacrifices at the OAU campus over the appointment of a non-indigene.

The playwright, who also said he had been “under a state of shock for a couple of decades” over the spate of killings, kidnappings and other forms of violent crimes in Nigeria, added that those behind the protest in OAU should be “ruthlessly” dealt with.He said:  “Why should there be an Ife VC anywhere? An Ife person wrote me and said, ‘look at these people disgracing us.’  I told him go there and disgrace them. You are an Ife person. You should be in the frontline.

“The Ife people should say those people don’t belong to us; we don’t know where they came from. And they should be dealt with ruthlessly.

“I just don’t understand what they put in the water these days. It is crazy,”

Fielding questions from Prof. Wale Adebamwi of the Africana Studies, Department of Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania on killings and kidnappings in Nigeria, the Nobel Laureate said he was alarmed by the magnitude of the incidents,

He blamed both the government and the people who, he said,  had not shown enough will to stem them.

“I have been under a state of shock for a couple of decades. So it was time I took my revenge and hopefully shock our own people just for exchange,”  told the audience.

Adebamwi’ had asked  Soyinka whether or not his latest book,” Chronicles of the Happiest People on Earth” was a summation of his most recent frustrations about a polity that is believed to have used its immense human and material resources to produce one of the most embarrassing national outcomes in Africa.

Soyinka stated that the things happening in the country were never imagined by him. He specifically made reference to the kidnap of students, saying  it  was “a reflection of not only the government but of the nonchalant attitude of people.”

His words: “Things have been happening I never thought I would witness. Take for instance the kidnapping of those children under the guise of religion. More than 300 school pupils were kidnapped from a school, where we put them there to take their examination, going about our business, raise their school fees and they disappeared completely.

“People saw them going. They saw them being kidnapped. The lackadaisical response of the government at the time was a shocker. But it wasn’t just Boko Haram alone. It isn’t just ISWAP. It is what has been happening just among the generality of people – killing for ritual purposes.

“You wake up, somebody has disappeared, the body is found, the vital organs removed. People kidnapping for ransom every day. Pick up the papers. This has been going on for decades. So, It’s been going on for a very long time. And we are pretending that this is not happening.”

The Nobel Laureate insisted that drastic action must be taken to put an end to the anomalies..

He said: “”I stated one time that anytime anybody is kidnapped in any state, let us shut down that state immediately until that person is recovered. It has reached that point that abnormal measures are absolutely imperative. It is no longer a choice. And yet the government continues to roll on.

“What exactly is ideology all about? It is about humans. The human is at the basis of all ideologies. So this has been going on for a long time. It is overwhelmingly making one feel impotent useless, staining what one thinks one has been able to achieve in terms of contribution to humanity

“We have now to tackle that painful question: What is human? Somebody who is capable of taking another being, slaughtering that person because you want to make money, whatever the circumstances are. Is that human?

“Let’s consider those who brutalise children, those who take children and sell them into slavery, which is what Boko Haram, ISWAP and the others have been doing. Are these human? Isn’t it about time we taught all those souls about the human race?

“We better start investigating thoroughly that question: Just what is human? Once upon a time of course people tried to define it along with race, colour, religion, gender etc. No. Now we must really get down to basics and then when we have a sort of lowest common denominator of what constitutes humanity, then we must be brave enough to know how to deal with those I have so identified If they are in a position of power.”