Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has decried continued rights abuse in Nigeria, years after struggle for freedom from slave trade and colonialism.
He spoke during this year’s United Nations Nelson Mandela Day, organised by Dr. Newton Jibunoh at Nelson Mandela Gardens, Asaba, Delta State.
At the event, marked by tree planting, Soyinka decried continued detention of Mubarak Bala, whom he considered a prisoner of conscience, following over 37 months incarceration for renouncing his former religious faith.
He said: “Talking about the fight between power and freedom, I am simply on the side of freedom, so was Nelson Mandela. So, are all prisoners of conscience, including this young man, Mubarak Bala, who has been in prison for 37 months for no crime in the statute books of Nigeria. It’s just deprivation of freedom.”
Asked whether government or people, should be held responsible, he said: “It is both! I have said this again and again; we must take ourselves away from thinking that the only enemy of public freedom is government. Sometimes, it is the people themselves, the civic polity that is the enemy.
“Without the collaboration of you and me, it will not be possible for any human being to be deprived his or her freedom or be reduced to the status of second-class citizenship without tacit, implicit or overt collaboration, and silence, very often, pretence.”
The literary icon harped on the need to learn the importance of continuity, lamenting: “No sooner than somebody’s humanity is trampled upon or denied, we make noise for about a few weeks and forget all about the person, male or female, Christian, Muslim or animist; we go about our ‘normal business.’
“The business is not normal, not as long as you or anybody you know or ought to know is deprived of what we enjoy. As a matter of fact, we are all in chains.
“After being enchained by external forces under slave trade, cultural disdain or contempt for Black humanity, it should be unacceptable for all of us that any of us should be subjected to that kind of treatment against which we fought, and the result of which we celebrate in our own corners. It’s something difficult to live with.
“This is an opportunity to proclaim the plight of this young man, which is a representation of what is happening all over the country, and bring it to the attention of the world. Therefore, nobody is too small to defend when his or her dignity or freedom is assailed.”
Bala, in a letter to President Bola Tinubu from his cell at Kuje Prison, Abuja, had written: “Sir, this is my 37th month unjustly imprisoned in Abuja, formerly in Kano Prison. Mr. President, sir, I am a prisoner of conscience, sought after only because I refused to follow the religion I was born into, especially coming from descendants of the 1804 conquerors.”
