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| Gumsu & Soyinka |
The open letter written by Sadiq
Abacha, the son of late military dictator, General Sanni Abacha, attacking
Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, for publicly rejecting an award from
President Goodluck Jonathan on account of the plan to simultaneously honour
Abacha during the centenary celebrations as one of the ‘Outstanding Promoters
of Unity, Patriotism and National Development’ went virile last week.
In rejecting the award, Soyinka had
criticized all forms of award or immortalization of Abacha, particularly the
naming of a hospital, where victims of a recent boarding school attacks
had been receiving treatment after the late maximum dictator.
“The sheer weight of indignation and
revulsion of most of Nigerian humanity at the recent Boko Harma atrocity in
Yobe is most likely to have overwhelmed a tiny footnote to that outrage, small
indeed, but of an inversely proportionate significance... This was the
name of the hospital to which the survivors of the massacre were taken”,
Soyinka had written.
“For the name of that hospital, it
is reported, is none other than that of General Sanni Abacha, a vicious usurper
under whose authority the lives of an elected president and his wife were
snuffed out. Assassinations – including through bombs cynically ascribed
to the opposition – became routine. Under that ruler, torture and other forms
of barbarism were enthroned as the norm of governance”.
He had recalled the hanging of nine
citizens, including writer and environmentalist Ken Saro-wiwa, against
widespread international condemnation; and likened the current reign of terror
to Abacha’s regime; saying that by honouring the late soldier, Jonathan had
scooped up a century’s accumulated degeneracy in one preeminent symbol, and
placed it on a podium for the nation to admire, emulate and even – worship.
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| Sadiq Abacha |
“Such abandonment of moral rigour
comes full circle sooner or later. The survivors of a plague known as Boko
Haram, students in a place of enlightenment and moral instruction, are taken to
a place of healing dedicated to an individual contagion – a murderer and thief
of no redeeming quality known as Sanni Abacha, one whose plunder is still being
pursued all over the world and recovered piecemeal by international consortiums
– at the behest of this same government which sees fit to place him on the
nation’s Roll of Honour!”, Soyinka had said, before emphatically adding that he
was rejecting his “share of this national insult”.
But responding in an open letter,
Sadiq launched a scathing attack against Soyinka, whom he suggested was
“unwise” not to recognize that the centenary celebrations offer the country’s
citizens a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to unite.
Sadiq criticized Soyinka for
accepting to chair the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) during the tenure of
fellow military ruler, General Ibrahim Babangida. In other parts of the letter,
he described the revered professor as a coward, a common writer, and a tactless
rebel against the centenary celebrations.
In the same vein, Gumsu Abacha, one
of the daughters of the late Nigerian dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha, also lashed
out at Prof. Wole Soyinka following the Nobel laureate’s statement about her
father.
Gumsu took to her Facebook page and
posted the following: “someone tell Soyinka, I liked his books, when I was
younger, but that is where it ends. Today, I reject his stupid, foolish,
insignificant statement.”