Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, has warned that the continued agitations of power shift by a section of the country could lead to another civil war and the notion of divine right to rule by any section of Nigeria must cease, saying it is undemocratic.
He described charges of treasonable felony for which certain ethnic militia leaders, including Alhaji Mujahid Asari Dokubo of the Niger Delta Volunteer Force (NDVF), Ralph Uwazurike of the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of Biafra (MASSOB), and Gani Adams of the Oodua Peoples Congress (OPC) as spurious and not in tune with democratic tenets.
Speaking at the public presentation of his memoirs, ‘You Must Set Forth at Dawn,’ Soyinka said the injustices and marginalization that led to the 1967-70 civil war were still rife, a development he said could yet plunge the nation into another civil war.
Said Soyinka: “Now, I spoke about civil war. I spoke about our lessons. What should be our lessons from the civil war? What should be our lessons from injustices, from marginalisation. From the killings and claims of the divine right to rule. This is something against which I have always stood. But, however misunderstood it is, any section of the country which believes it has the divine right to rule and expresses that by whatever other name-power shift, power return, et-cetera, et-cetera, they should understand the potential consequences of this kind of position.“They should understand that that is kind of mentality that ruled in racially-torn societies like Apartheid South Africa. It is the kind of mentality, which dominates Sudan today, which, in fact, has brought it close to Somalia. This notion of superiority, this notion of divinely given right to dominance has got to cease in this nation.
Continued the Nobel laureate: “I am talking about the injustices, the contradictions of society which are still very much with us. It means that we shouldn’t underestimate the possibility of another civil war breaking out. And, therefore, we should accept the moral and civil responsibilities of acting in ways, which do not accelerate the tempo of events and which in fact, go towards ensuring that we do not undergo another trauma of a civil war.
“People whose interest in what happens in society is sole self-advancement. They want to dominate the scene, that they alone represent the nation. I think that we should see the whole picture of not just what happens today, but what the picture will look like in a few years,” he stated,, stressing, “nobody should be complacent, particularly as we move towards 2007.”
He added: “It is not enough to keep saying, ‘Oh! He keeps saying that because he is Yoruba, he is saying that because he is Igbo, or because he is Borno. No! truth is truth. If we live together as an entity, we must cultivate an egalitarian society and understand all the entities because without an understanding of the different parts of the nation, we are a mere geographical _expression, a tinderbox awaiting explosion.
Soyinka, at the event which had in attendance the Cross Governor State Governor, Mr. Donald Duke, Ministers Nasir el’ Rufai and Oby Ezekwesili, Professor Sola Adeyeye of the House of Representatives, lamented what he said was the prevalence of contempt for the rule of law in Nigeria.
He remarked: “When we talk about law, nobody is and should be above the law. Law is an agreement. Nobody should be deprived of his right. Some people have been detained over the years without their lawyers knowing where they are kept. It is an abuse of the law. I am talking of Gani Adams, (Ralph) Uwazurike, the (Asari) Dokubos. They are detained for so long and brought out occasionally for hearing and hearing you know, the charges against them do not qualify for incarceration.
