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  • Prof. Wole Soyinka Escaped Death In Nairobi Kenya Mall Attack
  • 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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