Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, has asked the Muhammadu Buhari-led government to arrest the leader of Miyetti Allah group and apologise to activist Sunday Adeyemo, popularly known as Sunday Igboho, who has been declared wanted by the Department of State Service, DSS.
Commenting on the reactions that have trailed the swiftness with which the federal government arrested the leader of Indigenous People of Biafra, Nnamdi Kanu, the Nobel laureate said the federal government has not shown the same eagerness in going after bandits and insurgents.
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“The government can not wash itself clean on what seems to be a kind of comparative energy in pursuing the destabilised forces in the nation,” he said during an interview on BBC Pidgin on Monday.
“If we take ourselves back, once when I threw a challenge to Buhari, what I expect from a true leader is to issue an order, give a deadline that any illegal occupant of any villages, farms is given 48hours to quit after which the mighty forces of the nation will be unleashed on them. It was ignored.
“Years later, he came to say ‘we will respond to these people in the language they understand’. This is what I expected him to have said years ago, at the beginning of the insurgency.
“Their leadership–the Miyetti Allah — should have been arrested years ago, long before IPOB was declared a terrorist organisation.”
He said rather, the Miyetti Allah group has continued to act unchecked while the federal government has refused to “mount the same energy against them”.
“So people are right to say there has been an unequal and irregular approach to security and enforcement in this nation,” he added.
Apologise to Igboho
Soyinka said the sponsors of banditry and insurgency in the country have not been arrested or invited for questioning but that the security agency went ahead to invade Igboho’s home illegally.
“I’m not aware one of them (bandits, insurgents) has been called for questioning but what did Igboho do? They didn’t call him for questioning but attacked him in the middle of the night illegally and unconstitutionally,” he said.
The Department of State Services (DSS) had declared Igboho wanted after he escaped arrest when operatives of the agency raided his residence in Oyo state.
Igboho is agitating for the creation of ‘Yoruba Nation’.
Soyinka advised the federal government to tell Igboho he is no longer wanted and to let him be.
“My advice to the government is that they should stop pursuing this person as a criminal because you have begun acting in a criminal fashion against him. Because if and when Igboho comes to trial, I guarantee you it is the government that will be very embarrassed,” he said.
“I think they should just tell Igboho ‘we made a mistake, we should not have acted in this way, you are no longer wanted, please go back to your home’. In fact, escort him to his home and let him resume his normal life.
“As far as I am concerned it is up to Ignoho to decide. He knows what the circumstances were; he knows what happened before his people were killed, he is the only one that can decide for himself.”
