PROF. SOYINKA FIRES AT PRESIDENT JONATHAN.

Below are excerpts from Professor Wole Soyinka's letter to the President. 

“I have no doubt about the Boko Haram sponsorship allegation against a former Governor of Borno State, Ali Modu Sheriff, by an Australian negotiator, Stephen Davis. I am, therefore, compelled to warn that anything that Stephen Davis claims to have uncovered cannot be dismissed. 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.

“it is certain he will also take many others down with him.”

“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 organisations — 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.”

“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. 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 damage has been done, the rot in a nation’s collective soul bared to the world.”

“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 travelling 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 travelled 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?”

“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 criminalised, an attitude that owes so much to re-election desperation, when he moves from a passive ‘letting the law to take its course’ to galvanising the law to take its course, we shall gladly supply that name.”

“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.”

“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.“