Soyinka Fires; Says N82 Million Alleged Birthday Spending Is ‘Corruption Fighting Back’

Posted by African Examiner Featured, Latest Headlines, News Thursday, January 7th, 2016

By Funmilayo Omidiji

Noble Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka has responded to challenge thrown at him by the Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike over the alleged N82 Million purportedly splashed on his 80 birthday anniversary by the administration of former Governor Rotimi Chibuike Amaechi, describing the development as a very strange way of corruption fighting back.

Professor Soyinka Thursday, in a reply titled: “Those Who Flounder in the Sewage of Corruption” fired that the unprecedented call by “this governor is prescient of a warning I recounted in my recent pamphlet publication THE REPUBLIC OF LIARS, and was taken from my address to an anti-corruption global conference that took place in Tunisia two years ago”.

“Those words were: CORRUPTION STRIKES BACK. In this ongoing instance, that expression translates most vividly as “Those who are neck deep in the sewage of corruption ensure that they splatter sewage in all possible and improbable directions.”

I do however fully support the Wikeleaks call for multi-directional probes” Soyinka held

The Literary icon stressed that the descent to this present level of abominable distractions makes one truly despair, adding “it is one that even I did not envisage when I warned – CORRUPTION STRIKES BACK! Whether it brings honour or dishonour to the nation is another matter – I am saddened, but indifferent”.
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The social and human right critic however recommended the services of INTERPOL to guarantee its extension to all international organizations and governments to whom he affirmed he owed “uncountable events of recognition – including birthday luncheons, dinners, cultural receptions and events of real, fictitious, or simply opportunistic flavoring – to which I have submitted myself”.

While regarding such public statement by Wike as unsavory uttered by the “insecure incumbent of the Rivers State government Lodge”, he called on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), to go ahead with the investigation of what he again described as a “loose invitation to anti-crime agencies to investigate the potential crime of being honoured through any occasion”.