Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has warned of impending danger saying that the country is gradually sliding to “executive impunity” that threatens the nation’s democracy. Prof. Soyinka said that recent events in the polity were creating room for an emerging dictator.
In a statement titled, “Cool it, President Goodluck Jonathan,” Soyinka cautioned that the abuse of federal might, the police and destabilisation of the legislature was not healthy for the polity.

“Before the irretrievable point of escalation is reached, we have a duty to sound a collective alarm, even without the lessons of past violations of constitutional rights and apportionments of elected representatives of the people, and their consequences,” he said.

Soyinka decried the subtle and crude ways the Presidency is handling its disagreement with Amaechi, which is heating the polity in Rivers State. He said for the survival of democracy in the country, President Jonathan should stop the Federal Government- backed attack on Rivers State.

“There is an opportunity in Rivers State to break this spiralling culture of executive impunity – manifested in both subtle and crude ways – that is fast becoming the norm in a post-military dispensation that fitfully aspires to be called a democracy.”

The literary giant noted that a responsible government must reduce the increasing flash points in the country not to escalate it. His words: “The increasing flashpoints in the nation have reached an unsustainable level, and responsible governance must accept that it is an urgent duty to diminish, not increase them.

“Even the notoriously short Nigerian memory remains traumatised by recollection of the rape of Anambra that was enabled by the connivance of federal might, and the abandonment of all moral scruples in executive disposition.

“The people of Ogun State were humiliated by the antics of a power besotted governor, with their elected legislators locked out of the House of Assembly for upwards of a year.

“That hideous travesty was again made possible by the abusive use of the police. Even a child in this nation knows that the police derive its enabling and operational authority from the dictates of the centre, so there can be no disguising whose will is being executed wherever democratic norms are flouted and the people’s rights ground to mush under dictatorial heels.”

This is the third time in the past three months that Soyinka will be raising the alarm on the state of the nation.

http://nationalmirroronline.net/new/soyinka-warns-jonathan-against-dictatorship/