Soyinka to Tinubu: Probe unresolved assassinations as promised

Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka has called on President Bola Tinubu to fulfill his promise of revisiting unsolved assassinations and extrajudicial killings across Nigeria. Soyinka stressed that the government must not ignore cases like the killing of Deborah Samuel, a student at Shehu Shagari College of Education, Sokoto, who was murdered in 2023 after alleged blasphemy.

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When there was a government retreat, you remember? The incoming President said, ‘I want all the files of all the unsolved assassinations, killings, extrajudicial killings.’ What has happened to those files? I want you to join me in asking President Tinubu to say, we want you to dig up those files. We want to know what happened, why it happened, who is of value as a human being, and who is there for casual disposition.

Speaking at the 28th Wole Soyinka Lecture Series in Port Harcourt, Soyinka also demanded justice for Mene Ogidi, a 28-year-old man shot dead by a policeman in Delta State. He urged the Federal Government to ensure perpetrators face the law, framing the call within the lecture's theme of "Reclaiming the Nigerian State through Accountability, Justice and Civic Courage."

Soyinka expressed concern over the "casual butchery" and the lack of accountability for such killings. He questioned the fate of files related to unsolved assassinations promised to be reviewed by the incoming president. The laureate criticized the judiciary for what he described as a failure to uphold truth and justice, particularly highlighting the delayed justice for Deborah Samuel and questioning the swift apprehension of the police officer in Delta State compared to the suspects in Sokoto.

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That is the essence that I understand from this lecture. That is why I took the trouble, as a Seadog. This was a duty, and this is a message to the nation, to you as citizens, as human beings, to put an end to this casual butchery, no matter what the causes are.

He used the lecture series, which also served as the NAS Martyrs’ Day, to pay tribute to victims of state deficiencies and complicity. Soyinka warned against selective justice, emphasizing that perpetrators of crimes, regardless of the cause, must be identified and punished according to the law. He lamented the slow pace of justice for victims like Deborah, whose classmates reportedly displayed the matchstick used to set her ablaze, and contrasted it with the immediate arrest in the Delta State case.

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My remark is to remind you and pay honour to those who have lost their lives as a result of these deficiencies in the state and also the criminal participation, even indirect, of ours, the complicity i