Nigeria’s Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka has asked the Federal Government to apologise over Sunday Igboho’s house raid by some officials of the Department of State Services where two people were said to have been killed.
Sunday Igboho’s house raid by DSS in Ibadan, Oyo State, happened in the early hours of Thursday morning and was based on intelligence the security operatives said it had received that he was stockpiling arms to cause chaos within the region.
Sunday Igboho’s house raid happened after he called for a ‘Yoruba Nation’ over what he has described as a ‘Fulani invasion’ of the South-West. He was also declared wanted by the DSS.
In an interview with BBC Pidgin published on Monday, Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka said the government’s actions and rationale for invading Igboho’s home “stinks.”
“My advise to the government is that they should stop pursuing Igboho as a criminal, because you have begun by acting in a criminal fashion against him,” he said.
“I think they should tell Igboho ‘we made a mistake’, ‘we should not have acted in this way’, ‘you are no longer wanted’, ‘go back to your home, in fact escort him to his home’ and let him resume his normal life.”
According to the Nobel Laureate, Igboho’s fight for freedom was preceded by criminal acts of enemies of Nigeria who “appear to be supported by the force of the State.”
While Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka noted he doesn’t ‘like the sound of a Yoruba Nation’ any more than he likes the sound of a Tiv or Igbo nation, he said the country must be restructured through the decentralisation of power.
According to the erudite professor, Nigeria’s current structure was imposed upon the people by the military.