Sunday Igboho: It Is Not Illegal For Anyone To Express Intention To Leave Any Federation -Wole Soyinka

Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, says it is not criminal or illegal for anyone to express intention to leave any federation.

He condemned as “bizarre”, the midnight raid by the Department of State Services on the Ibadan house of Yoruba activist Sunday Adeyemo also known as Sunday Igboho, last Thursday.

Soyinka, who spoke during an interview with BBC News Pidgin on Monday monitored by KWARAREPORTERS, urged the government to apologise to Igboho.

He said, “How can you place the will for separation as a criminal act? That kind of language doesn’t exist in the constitution, he doesn’t exist in law. It does not exist in the catalogue of immoralities because it is not an immoral act or position to say that you want to stop being part of an entity or you want to join an entity.”

Soyinka subsequently gave examples of people who left a federation or a union to form or join another state including the Bakassi people of Southern Nigeria who seceded to Cameroon.

“My advice to the government is that they should stop pursuing Igboho as a criminal because you have begun by acting in a criminal fashion against him,” he said.

“If and when Igboho comes to trial, I guarantee you the government will be very embarrassed.

“I think they should tell Igboho ‘we made a mistake’, ‘we should not have acted in this way’, ‘you are no longer wanted’, ‘go back to your home, in fact escort him to his home’ and let him resume his normal life,” the Nobel Laureate said.

The DSS had on Thursday paraded 13 of Igboho’s guards and close associates in Abuja. The DSS also said it killed two of his associates in a gun duel with the secret police. The two men were later identified as Adogan and Alfa.

Though Igboho had escaped the raid, his house and cars were riddled with bullets while bloodstains splattered over the floors of the house.

The secret police have since declared Igboho wanted. The activist is being accused of stockpiling weapons to destabilise the country under the guise of agitation for Yoruba nation but he has since denied it.

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