Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has said that the abduction of the leader of the Indigenous People of Biafra, IPOB, is wrong morally and internationally.
He also said that there is no criminality or illegality in the expression of intention to leave any federation.
Speaking on BBC pidgin on Monday, Soyinka said that Kanu would only be judged based on hate rhetorics which he said were wrong.
He also asked the federal government to stop pursuing the Oduduwa Republic agitator, Sunday Igboho and apologise to him.
“How can you place the will for separation as a criminal act? That kind of language doesn’t exist in the constitution, he doesn’t exist in law” he said.
“It does not exist in the catalogue of immoralities because it is not an immoral act or position to say that you want to stop being part of an entity or you want to join an entity,” he added.
He said that Bakassi people of Southern Nigeria seceded to Cameroon.
Condemned as “bizarre”, the midnight raid by the Department of State Services on the Ibadan house of Igboho, last Thursday, he urged the government to apologise to Igboho.
He said: “More important for me is the position of the government, saying that the ‘existence of these weapons’ proved that he was planning war against the state. That position, very loaded statement, was simply deliberate to conflict issues.
“It was to obscure the fact that Igboho and other people, myself included, have been decrying the loss of lives of law-abiding citizens, farmers especially all over the nation. Not just civilians, (Minister of Defense, Gen. Theophilus) Danjuma (retd.), told the people, ‘Don’t trust the military anymore, defend yourself’. Some other voices like governors have made similar statements.
“Now, Igboho, even if he had those weapons, he is claiming that his mission is to liberate his people from the tyranny of squatters, who now become violent overlords, and he has a good cause in that sense.
“Testimonies of farmers who have been brutalised, dehumanised by these squatters, who have acknowledged and identified themselves as Fulani, over decades of this anomalous kind of situation in which the people did not receive the necessary, mandatory and entitled defence and protection by the security forces, in which sometimes, it is the victims who’ve been jailed, the recent case in Ibarapa from instance, is a personal testimony of those who were arrested and detained by the police simply for going to challenge those who were terrorising and raping their women.
“So now, you have a situation where the government who is saying the ‘existence of these weapons’ means that Igboho is planning an armed insurrection against the state. The whole thing from beginning to the end just stinks: the raid, the motivation has become very implausible.”
Soyinka tackled the President Muhammadu Buhari’s regime for also not proscribing AK-47-wielding herdsmen as terrorists who are waging a violent insurrection against the Nigerian state.
“My advice to the government is that they should stop pursuing Igboho as a criminal because you have begun by acting in a criminal fashion against him.
“If and when Igboho comes to trial, I guarantee you the government will be very embarrassed.
“I think they should tell Igboho ‘we made a mistake’, ‘we should not have acted in this way’, ‘you are no longer wanted’, ‘go back to your home, in fact, escort him to his home and let him resume his normal life,” the Nobel Laureate added.
