Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, has described as inhuman and callous, the attack on protesters calling for the release of the convener of Revolution Now, Omoyele Sowore, by the Department of State Service, DSS.
The court had ordered the release of Sowore, having met the bail conditions, but the DSS is yet to release him several days after.
Sowore has been held by the security agency since August for being behind the brain that organised a protest against the present government.
Reacting to the attack on the protesters calling for Sowore’s release by DSS on Tuesday, Soyinka, in a statement said the action of the government’s security agency was criminal.
According to him, it had increased the untenable defiance by the state.
His words: “Why the desperation? The answer is straightforward: the government never imagined that the bail conditions for Sowore would ever be met. Even Sowore’s supporters despaired. The bail test was clearly set to fail! It took a while for the projection to be reversed, and it left the DSS floundering. That agency then resorted to childish, cynical lies. It claimed that the ordered release was no longer in their hands, but in Sowore’s end of the transfer. The lie being exploded, what next? Bullets of course!
“Such a development is not only callous and inhuman, it is criminal. It escalates an already untenable defiance by the state. As I remarked from the onset, this is an act of government insecurity and paranoia that merely defeats its real purpose. And now – bullets? This is no longer comical. Perhaps it is necessary to remind this government of precedents in other lands where, even years after the event, those who trampled on established human rights that generate homicidal impunity are called to account for abuse of power and crimes against humanity.”
He added: “Enough of this charade, nothing more than a display of crude, naked power. Release Omoyele Sowore and save us further embarrassment in the regard of the world. An apology to the nation by the DSS and the judiciary would also not be out of place. It would go some distance in redeeming the image of an increasingly fascistic agency and reduce the swelling tide of public disillusionment.”
