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<\/p>\nHe described the act by by the Department of State Services (DSS) as \u201ca terrorist midnight arrest.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sowore is the convener of \u2018#RevolutionNow\u2019 protests, which has been scheduled to hold nationwide on Monday, August 5.<\/p>\n
Soyinka, in a statement made available on Sunday and titled: \u201cSurely, Not Again!!!\u201d, said the \u201cdeployment of alarmist expressions\u201d such as \u201ctreason,\u201d \u201canarchist,\u201d and \u201cpublic incitement\u201d by security agents was predictable and banal and that the expressions have become meaningless.<\/p>\n
The Nobel Laureate wrote in part: \u201cNothing that he said to me in private engagement ever remotely approached an intent to destabilise governance or bypass the normal democratic means of changing a government.<\/p>\n
\u201cI therefore find the reasons given by the Inspector-General for the arrest and detention of this young ex-presidential candidate totally contrived and untenable, unsupported by any shred of evidence.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis arrest is a travesty and violation of the fundamental rights of citizens to congregate and make public their concerns.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is all so sadly d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu. How often must we go through this wearisome cycle?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe underwent identical cynical contrivances under the late, unlamented Sani Abacha, when he sent storm-troopers to disrupt a planning session for a similar across-nation march at Tai Solarin School, Ikenne.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was followed up by a personalised letter that was hand delivered by the State Security Services to me under their summons, at their Abeokuta so-called \u2018Annexe,\u2019 with near identical wording to the threats contained in today\u2019s release from the desk of the Chief of Police.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt least, I was summoned, not subjected to a terrorist midnight arrest. Some irony!<\/p>\n
\u201cThe same pattern Pavlovian conduct manifested itself under yet another supposed democratic ruler who personally declared that the gathering of civilians to deliberate on and propose a constitution for the nation was \u2018high treason\u2019, and would be resisted by the full rigour of state power if we persisted.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Inspector-General of Police mobilized his forces and issued inflammatory proclamations, but PRONACO went ahead despite all the thundering from Aso citadel. Can the police ever learn anything also their tear-gassing and brutalizing of grieving mothers who marched peacefully to protest the deaths of their children in a plane crash inferno?<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir mission, under that same regime, which was simply to deliver a letter to government house in Lagos, demanding greater safety in airline operations, yet such a rational intent, born of traumatic circumstances, was quashed on the sidewalks of a supposed twentieth century nation.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd yet again, even a faceless cabal under yet another civilian regime refused to be left out of the insensate play of power. A march on Aso Rock calling for an end to governance by a ghostly entity was slated to be crushed, but fortunately, a conflicting balance of interests decided in favour of a reduced trajectory of protest.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd so on and on and on, in a nation which continues to speak at once through both sides of the mouth, spewing out the same Treason monotone, as if this was a magic incantation that could substitute for the venting of mass feelings, even as collective therapy,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Soyinka urged the Inspector-General to go through the daily journals of the past few weeks and months, read and digest the calls by numerous sectors of society \u2013 across professions and national groupings \u2013 \u201cfor demonstrations against the parlous conditions of society, all identifying ills to which attention must be drawn, and urgently, through mass action.<\/p>\n
\u201cReligious bodies have urged such remedies, so have civic associations. The ready recourse to arrests, incarceration and threats to civilians are ultimately counter-productive. They alienate the citizens, erode their confidence in governance responsiveness, and thereby advance the very extremist nightmare that security agencies believe they are acting to thwart.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we cannot learn from the histories and experiences of other societies, let us at least learn from ours. Freedom is not so glibly qualified. It cannot be doled out like slops of charity from soup kitchens. Let the Police stick to their task of protecting and managing protests, not attempt to place their own meaning and declaration of intent on bogey words like \u2013 revolution,\u201d Soyinka stated.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, on Sunday, condemned the Buhari government over Omoyele Sowore\u2019s arrest. He described the act by by the Department of State Services (DSS) as \u201ca terrorist midnight arrest.\u201d Sowore is the convener of \u2018#RevolutionNow\u2019 protests, which has been scheduled to hold nationwide on Monday, August 5. Soyinka, in a statement made […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":137924,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[41,10526,5739],"class_list":["post-140971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-politics","tag-buhari","tag-omoyele-sowore","tag-soyinka"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=140971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/137924"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=140971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=140971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=140971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}