Nobel laureate Prof Wole Soyinka says the outcome of the governorship election in Osun State reflects “the voice of Bola Ige resounding from beyond the grave.”
Ige, a former attorney-general of the federation and minister of justice, was murdered on December 23, 2001. A former deputy governor of Osun State Iyiola Omisore has been linked to the murder ever since, an allegation he denies.
When Omisore emerged national secretary of the All Progressives Congress in April, Prof Soyinka kicked against it and reopened old wounds. According to Soyinka, it was morally wrong for a major political party to have Omisore in such an exalted position.
At the governorship poll held in Osun State on Saturday, the incumbent Governor Gboyega Oyetola of the APC lost to Ademola Adeleke of the Peoples Democratic Party.
Reacting to it, Soyinka said in a statement on Sunday that “those who conspired to catapult his (Ige’s) destroyers to unmerited national prominence, to insult the memories of the living, and jettison basic ethical constraints, have been justly served.”
The professor of comparative literature added, “It is a lesson that speaks to other zones of rightful public expectations, equity, and just entitlements. One despairs but continues to hope that there are still receptive minds in which such lessons will germinate.
“If we may adapt a wise saying from the ancients: the beast of burden, nicknamed Equity, ambles its mined course to destination but, sooner or later, that donkey arrives.”
