NOBEL Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, has condemned the crude manner in which operatives of the State Security Service (SSS) re-arrested the convener of the #RevolutionNow protest, Omoyele Sowore, in an Abuja court.
He urged President Muhammad Buhari to call the SSS operatives, whom he described as “wild dogs of disobedience” to order.
Soyinka made the remarks on Friday in a statement titled ‘Lessons from the African Wild Dog’, even as he claimed to see much similarity in the manner the SSS operatives invaded the court premises and a video of a pack of the famed African wild dogs’ hunt which he said he watched some years back.
The literary icon equally recalled a comment he made on Thursday where he pointed out that there was “near perfect similarity between plain crude thuggery and the current rage of court disobedience,” declaring that little did he suspect that the SSS men, whom he described as “state children of disobedience” would aspire to the level of “the African wild dogs on a pack hunt.”
He said, “It has become imperative and urgent to send this message to President-General Buhari: Rein in your wild dogs of disobedience. And for a start, get a trainer to teach them some basic court manners.”
Soyinka, while raising the alarm about the “escalating degradation of the judiciary through multiple means, of which disobedience of court orders is fast becoming the norm,” warned that disobedience calls to disobedience, which could only be caused by the government itself.
According to him, should such a sad development occur, the state, “unquestionably,” bears full responsibility for the ensuing social condition known as anomie.
“I apologise for underestimating the DSS capacity for the unthinkable. I reiterate the nation’s concern, indeed alarm, about the escalating degradation of the judiciary through multiple means, of which disobedience of court orders is fast becoming the norm.
ALSO READ: Osinbajo inaugurates Daniel’s multi-millon naira hotel in Abeokuta
“May I remind this government that disobedience calls to disobedience, and that disobedience of the orders of the constitutional repository of the moral authority of arbitration – the judiciary – can only lead eventually to a people’s disregard of the authority of other arms of civil society, a state of desperation that is known, recognised and accepted as civil disobedience. It is so obvious, state disobedience leads eventually to civil disobedience, piecemeal or through a collective withdrawal of recognition of other structures of authority.
“That way leads to chaos but who set it in motion? As is often the case, the state, unquestionably. Such a state bears full responsibility for the ensuing social condition known as anomie,” Soyinka said.