Nobel Laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka has again hit out at President Muhammadu Buhari over the state of the nation, saying “it is finished.”
He faulted President Buhari’s decision to grant state pardon to some Nigerians convicted of corruption.
The frontline playwright said the President had placed all his eggs in one basket and that these eggs had “squashed against Nigerian faces that they shall not forget – or wipe off – in a hurry.”
Soyinka in a statement titled, “A putrid presidential Easter egg,” said, “Coming from a leader who had placed all his eggs in one basket, labeled anti-corruption, this is one egg squashed against Nigerian faces that they shall not forget – or wipe off – in a hurry.”
“It evokes the legend of Pandora’s box, whose contents are alleged to constitute all the ills that plague the world. Putrid to the core, allied to power provocations in numerous variations, such as catapulting a notorious player in the martyrdom of a serving minister of justice” to the hub of governance’s wheel, these define the nature of bequests that have brought the nation to this moment of near dissolution.
“Precedents are no consolation, no excuses. One states the obvious in remarking that precedents either undermine or reinforce principles, and aspiring offenders, especially in the political domain, are encouraged or inhibited by the ease or difficulty of access to the fount of mercy.
“Officeholders, we presume, are constrained by the existence of that dangling Sword of Damocles – simply knowing that one day, the cloak of immunity will turn threadbare, and the awaited day of reckoning finds them answerable. Clearly, not any longer.
“You will forgive, though disagree with me, I know, for clambering onto the Easter wagon myself, to echo the words of the one whose passage through the world the Easter season commemorates: It is finished!”