Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, has dared former Osun State deputy governor and new National Secretary of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Iyiola Omisore, to sue him over his (Soyinka’s) recent comments that Omisore should be held responsible for the murder of former Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, Chief Bola Ige.
Soyinka who disclosed this at a media parley in Lagos on Thursday with the theme “Forget the past, forfeit the future: A nation seceding from humanity,’’ said he would be “delighted to be involved in legal proceedings to unravel the killers of former Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Chief Bola Ige.”
The literary icon had, in a statement shortly after Omisore emerged as the APC National Secretary on March 26, said any attempt at resolving the long standing murder case has been already “hamstrung and disrobed of credibility with the emergence of a prime suspect in the case as the national secretary of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).”
Soyinka, who also made references to “unspoken” threats by Omisore demanding the retraction of the statement by him on the Chief Bola Ige’s murder case, emphasized the need to unravel the death of former attorney general of the country who was assassinated by suspected gunmen at his Bodija, Ibadan, Oyo State, home on December 23, 2001.
Irked by the accusation, Omisore, in a letter dated April 4, 2022, by his lawyer, Gboyega Oyewole (SAN), which he addressed to Soyinka, advised the Nobel Laureate to “be better informed and take necessary steps to withdraw the earlier comments.”
Demanding a retraction of the statement and a public apology, Omisore said although he held the renowned scholar in high esteem as an elder statesman and Nobel laureate, he either “made the statement without full knowledge of what had transpired in the matter or as a result of misinformation.”
But while making a clarification on his statement at the press conference, Soyinka said for a man to de-cap a respected Minister and throw the cap to thugs, was disrespectful, noting that such an action led to other actions.
“That doesn’t mean you were responsible for the person’s death. But certain actions led to other actions.
“Such a person should not be made an envoy of a ruling party even if the party desired to give him a post.
“We are talking of the party of those in charge of the governance and justice of this country. The leadership of APC and I am not talking of Buhari alone, do you have to unleash scorpions on our memory? It is not Soyinka who provided this. It’s those who were so insensitive, who rubbed that murder in our faces.
“I will be delighted to go to court so that we can go into details. I asked the APC leadership to have a rethink because the issue will not go away.”
