Nobel Laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka, has said that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) was punished at the recent Osun State Governorship Election for committing a “sacrilege” against a slain former Minister of Justice, Bola Ige; and those who represent his ideals.
The foremost playwright made the comment when he spoke on Channels Television’s NewsNight, a pre-recorded interview aired on Monday.
“When the results began to come in, I had just returned (from overseas). It was like a welcome present because I saw that party (APC) being punished for that act of sacrilege,” he said.
Soyinka said the APC committed sacrilege against Ige by elevating one of those indicted in the murder of the former justice minister as a national executive of the ruling party. The octogenarian, however, did not mention the name of the said suspect.
Ademola Adeleke of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) defeated the incumbent Osun State governor, Gboyega Oyetola, who ran on the platform of the APC in the just-concluded governorship election.
Adeleke polled 403,371 votes, 28,344 more than his closest rival, Oyetola who polled 375,027 votes.
Soyinka had immediately said that the voice of Ige resounded from the grave in the 2022 governorship election in Osun.
He said the APC and the PDP have recorded so many inter-marriages and are polluted.
Soyinka said: “The two parties (APC and PDP) have become very confusing to start with. Members have moved across so much…there has been so much inter-marriage and the bloodline has diluted in many aspects, being polluted in many aspects. It even got to a stage where a prominent member of the APC actually articulated the sentiment of: ‘Oh, come and join us and your sins will be forgiven’.”
“It didn’t surprise me too much that somebody who has been so heavily implicated in the death of a prominent member of that party, Bola Ige, he is a founding member, that his memories should be so thrashed by consulting one of the prominent figures who featured in the events – forget whether he was innocent of the actual crime or not – was heavily implicated in the humiliation of that individual, that founding member of that party who was also the minister of justice of this nation.
“To actually catapult one of those crime suspects and proven contributors…and to find that that person has been given a position in that party (APC), in governance, and after the President (Muhammadu Buhari) had actually inaugurated a re-examination of that episode amongst other crimes, that is quite a bit of shock. And I mentioned at a time, that is a bit of sacrilege. And remember, this Osun is Bola Ige’s state.”
Ige, a justice minister under the government of then President Olusegun Obasanjo, was assassinated on December 23, 2001, at his Ibadan residence in the Oyo State capital.
