Sowere’s Arrest: Why Wole Soyinka Should Not Complain

By Dons Eze

I laugh with scorn when some people begin to make noise about members of the Department of State Security (DSS) allegedly entering into a court room to re-arrest Omoyele Sowore who was earlier released on bail a day before, after spending about 140 days in the facility of the undercover police. They said that what the DSS did was an anathema, a desecration of the sacred institution of the judiciary.

Who told them that? I wonder why some people would be making noise about Sowore being re-arrested and where he was arrested. What is so special about Sowore? Is he too big to be arrested? If he had committed an offence he must certainly be made to account for that. What of the so many other people who had been arrested and detained for one crime or the other? Why is his own so special, so different?

They said that the DSS violated the sanctity of the court, a sacred institution. And so what? Are courts the only institution in Nigeria that have been desecrated or violated under the present administration? How about churches where some people entered and slaughtered people, both priests and worshipers alike? What did they do about it? Nothing. They only made some little noise and there it ended.

What about the National Assembly which was invaded in 2017 by the same DSS operatives? Was it not what had now put Yemi Osinbajo, who then was Acting President in trouble when he had the audacity to sack Lawal Daura, the then boss of DSS, while the President was on medical leave in London? They never forgave him, and will never forgive him for that irresponsible act.

Now, they want another DSS boss to be fired. But that wouldn’t happen. They are merely dreaming. Do they think that the DSS would have contemplated going to invade the National Assembly, or the courts, if there was no powerful person behind them, if they had no godfather?

Do you remember somebody called Rafindadi between 1984 and 1985? He was a very powerful man then. He was the boss of the former Nigerian Security Organization (NSO). At that time, Rafindadi and his men were arresting and detaining people at random. Many people feared him and dared not do anything thing that could attract his attention, because they knew that he had a powerful godfather. It was after the godfather was overthrown that a lot of sordid things inside the NSO were revealed.

Now, the godfather is back. Because he wanted power badly, and at all costs, he told us that he had changed, that he had become “a converted democrat”! We believed him and trusted him. But will you ever believe a lion, that it was no longer carnivorous, that it has become a lamb, harmless? If you will, then try to go close by and see if it will not tear your body to pieces.

Why should Wole Soyinka be telling our President to call his “dogs” to order? Hope he was not referring to the DSS, otherwise he could be charged with treasonable felony for insulting or maligning a powerful agent of the administration?

In 1984, Wole Soyinka told us that he was checking out of the country because, he was “tired of  dialogue with the deaf”. But in 2015, Soyinka believed that the “deaf” man had been healed. He became his toast. He then told us to begin to queue behind the man in the election. And we did. Why he is complaining now beats one’s imagination.

Omoyele Sowore was a very powerful force behind the “Occupy Nigeria” campaign in 2014 following a marginal increase in the pump price of petroleum products by the Goodluck Jonathan administration. Every one of them wanted Jonathan out, because the man “is weak” and “clueless”. Now, we have a “strong” President. Why are they making noise? Why are they complaining?

Under a “weak” President, petrol sold at N87 a litre, but under a “strong” President, it is selling at N145 a litre. Under a “weak” President, Nigeria attained the status of the strongest economy in Africa, but under a “strong” President, Nigerian economy went into recession. Under a “weak” President, court orders were obeyed, and there was no prisoner of conscience, but under a “strong” President, court orders are disobeyed, while our prison yards are filled up with political prisoners.

It’s pity that those we have rejected in Nigeria have become the toasts of the world. Jonathan is now the new face of democracy in Africa. He is all over the continent midwifing democracy. But he cannot do it in his own country. Ngozi Okonjo-Iwuala is it every business roundtable in every part of the world. Olenma Otteh is with the World Bank formulating policies, while Akinwunmi Adesina is doing great magic at the African Development Bank.

The problem with Nigerians is that we do not value what we have. Many of us also have no sense of history, or have very short memory, or are very selfish and myopic, otherwise, Omoyele Sowore would have known that to ride on the back of a tiger is never a jolly ride, because any such a person would eventually end up in the tiger’s belly.