Despite Denial, Soyinka Condemns Jonathan Over #BringBackGoodLuck Campaign

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Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka has condemned President Goodluck Jonathan over the controversy generated as a result of the #BringBackGoodLuck campaign, as well as the President’s trip to Chad where Borno State former Governor, Ali Modu Sheriff was also presented as a member of the travelling team.

Soyinka spoke in a piece titled, ‘Wages of Impunity, where he noted that even though the President had come out to disown the #BringBackGoodLuck campaign, “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,” he said.

 

Feeling the heat

The Nobel Laureate also condemned the President’s decision to have former Borno Governor, Ali Modu Sheriff as a part of his entourage to Chad:

 “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.”