In a piece he titled 'The Wages of Impunity',
Nobel Laureate Prof Soyinka 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 posted
on Sahara Reporters, Prof Soyinka wrote that he knows Australian hostage negotitaor Stephen
Davis, saying 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.
He also wrote that he has his own theories regarding how General Ihejirika may have come under Stephen Davis’ searchlight. Find his article after the cut...
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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