Prof. Wole Soyinka, yesterday
Saturday March 1st said he rejected the centenary award conferred on him by
the Federal Government because late military dictator, Gen. Sani
Abacha, was included in the list of awardees. His statement titled ‘The Canonisation of Terror,’ reads in part...
“Under that ruler, torture and other forms of barbarism were enthroned as the norm of governance. Nine Nigerian citizens, including the writer and environmentalist, Ken Saro-wiwa, were hanged after a trial that was stomach-churning even by the most primitive standards of judicial trial, and in defiance of the intervention of world leadership.
“We are speaking of a man who placed this nation under siege during an unrelenting reign of terror that is barely different from the current rampage of Boko Haram. It is this very psychopath that was recently canonised by the government of Goodluck Jonathan in commemoration of one hundred years of Nigerian trauma.”
