But for a stroke of luck, Nobel laureate,
Professor Wole Soyinka, would have been
among the dead in the terror attack that
took place at the Nairobi Westgate mall in
Kenya last weekend.
Speaking at a press conference at the
Freedom Park, Victoria Island, Lagos, on
Friday in honour of the late Ghanaian poet,
Professor Kofi Awoonor who died in the
attack, Soyinka led a group of eminent
Nigerian writers to condemn the Nairobi
massacre. Soyinka, who said he, like
Awoonor, was invited to the Storymoja/
Hay Literature Festival, said he couldn't
attend because of other pressing
engagements he had elsewhere.
"My absence was particularly regrettable,
because I had planned to make up for my
failure to turn up for the immediate prior
edition. Participant or absentee however,
this is one edition we shall not soon
forget," said Soyinka.
The iconic writer said, considering his close
relationship with Awoonor, he might have
been at the same place with him and could
have been shot as well. He said: "Kofi and I
could have been splitting a bottle at that
same watering hole in between events and
at the end of each day."
Condemning the use of religion to commit
atrocities, Soyinka, who spoke on the
theme, "Humanity and Against," said:
"Those who organised and carried out the
outrage on innocent lives in Nairobi are
carriers of the most lethal virus of
corruption imaginable – corruption of the
soul, corruption of the spirit, corruption of
that animating humanistic essence that
separates us from predatory beasts. I am
no theologian of any religion, but I aver
that these assailants delude themselves
with vistas of paradise after life, that their
delusion is born of the perverted reading
of salvation and redemption."
As the literary community mourned the
deceased writer, Soyinka felt constrained
to denounce his killers, who he described
as "the virulent sub-species of humanity
who bathe their hands in innocent blood."
He noted further: "Only cowards turn
deadly weapons against the unarmed, only
the depraved glorify in, or justify the act.
True warriors do not wage wars against
the innocent. Profanity is the name given
to the defilement of the sanctity of human
life. We call on those who claim to exercise
the authority of a fatwa to pronounce that
very doom, with all its moral weight, upon
those who engage in this serial violation of
the right to life, life as a god-given
possession that only the blasphemous dare
contradict, and the godless wantonly
curtail. This scalp that they have added to
their collection was roof to a unique brain
that a million of their kind can never
replace."
Lending his voice to the condemnation of
the murder of Awoonor, renowned
playwright, Professor JP Clark, said the late
Ghanaian writer came across as a non-
conformist during his encounter with him
at a pan Africa literary conference in
Kampala, Ugunda, in 1962
Saddened by his death, Clark said: "I was in
a state of shock to hear that Kofi Awoonor
could go like that by random bullets in a
country far off. It really shows the
absurdity of life." He advised all to do the
best they can while alive.
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