Connect with us

News

Soyinka condemns video asking Ndigbo to vacate Yorubaland

Published

on

Soyinka warns Nigerian government against muzzling dissenting voices

Renowned playwright and Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, has denounced a video calling on Igbo indigenes to vacate Yorubaland.

One Grandson Adeyinka, a UK-based Nigerian, in a video circulating on social media, gave people from Igboland 48 hours to leave South-West states or be dealt with.

“This is a warning to the Igbo people in Yorubaland. We are giving you a 48-hour ultimatum from today, Friday 23rd October, 2020 until Sunday, 25th of October, 2020 to leave Yorubaland.

“From Monday 26th of October, we will close the roads, stop all the vehicles across Yorubaland and every Igbo national will be dealt with accordingly,” Adeyinka said in the video.

READ ALSO: Afenifere, Ohanaeze condemn looting, shooting of #EndSARS protesters, appeal for calm

But in a statement he titled ‘Identity thieves on the rampage,’ and released on Saturday, Soyinka urged the public to be wary of identity thieves using falsehood to legitimise their antics.

He said, “Undoubtedly in order to promote the video clip of an ethnic revanchist calling on Igbo to leave Yorubaland, this same lunatic fringe has exhumed, and embarked on circulating an ancient fabrication – several years mouldering in the grave – once attributed to me and vigorously denounced.

“That statement impudently expounds, as my utterance, what the Hausa want, what the Yoruba want, and what the Igbo want. Such an attribution– let me once again reiterate – is the work of sick, cowardly minds that are ashamed, or lack the courage, as the saying goes, ‘to answer their fathers’ names.’ At least the current ethnic rabble-rouser has the courage of his convictions, not so the sick brigade of identity thieves.”

Soyinka went further to say, “Normally, one should totally ignore the social dregs. However, in the present atmosphere where fake news is so easily swallowed and acted upon without reflection, I feel once again obliged to denounce this recurrent obscenity. As for our brother and sister Igbo, I hope they have learnt to ignore the toxic bilge under which some Nigerian imbeciles seek to drown the nation.

“It is time also, I believe, to also enter the following admonition: one cannot continue to monitor and respond to the concoctions of these addicts of falsehood, and their assiduous promoters who have yet to learn to wipe the filth off their tablets. The patrons of social platforms should develop the art of discrimination. Some attributions are simply so gross that, to grant them even a moment’s latitude of probability diminishes the civic intelligence of the recipient.”

Join the conversation

Opinions

Support Ripples Nigeria, hold up solutions journalism

Balanced, fearless journalism driven by data comes at huge financial costs.

As a media platform, we hold leadership accountable and will not trade the right to press freedom and free speech for a piece of cake.

If you like what we do, and are ready to uphold solutions journalism, kindly donate to the Ripples Nigeria cause.

Your support would help to ensure that citizens and institutions continue to have free access to credible and reliable information for societal development.

Donate Now