•Leah Sharibu, one of the school girls still held by Boko Haram insurgents, turned 16 yesterday. It was her 449th day in captivity. As a tribute on her birthday commenmoration, Prof. Wole Soyinka read an ode saluting her resilience at the GeorgeTown Univeristy, United States, Emmanuel Ogebe reports.
Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka has paid tribute to abducted schoolgirl Leah Sharibu in an ode to her and Chibok, a community in Borno State where some schoolgirls were abducted five years ago.
Likening Leah to iconic human rights champion the late Nelson Mandela of South Africa, Soyinka said we must “celebrate the exception who said “no” ” as it reminded him of Mandela who refused conditional release.
Reciting the ode titled: Mandela comes to Leahat Georgetown University in Washington DC, United States, Soyinka said: “No”, she said, “Faith is not of compulsion”… her torch undimmed in the den of zealots.”
Soyinka said he could only recite excerpts from the ode because he broke down the last time he had tried to read it.
He also did an epic takedown of a Georgetown professor’s claim that poverty and desperation was behind Boko Haram terrorism.
He said that it was ideological bordering on the metaphysical and we should not underestimate it. “We’re dealing with something much deeper,” he said. He recalled that the son of a former Chief Justice of Nigeria, who is in the upper middle class, joined ISIS abroad.
“There’s a will to deny the possibility of horror and evil. We have reached a point where we have to go beyond the material analysis of this phenomenon. It goes beyond poverty and marginalisation. The ideology of sheer morbidity,” he added.
Soyinka deplored the 20 American intellectuals who wrote protesting the proposal to designate Boko Haram as a Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO, because, according to them, it would interfere with their “scholarly research”. He said: “It took my breath away”.
The retired professor said: “Some were my friends (but) they, in all seriousness, had a wrong analytical approach to the problem. We must simply jettison the language of political correctness. Political correctness is turning Africa continent into the graveyard of freedom and liberty if we don’t call things by their proper names…
“We’re dealing now with the toxin of power which barely manifests itself under the cloak of religion.”
Also on the panel with Soyinka was the ambassador who belatedly announced Obama’s decision to designate Boko Haram as an FTO as then top US diplomat for Africa Assistant Secretary of State Linda Thomas Greenfield.
Greenfield pleaded impotence in responding to the Chibok abductions due to denials by many as to what happened, which she said, was her biggest challenge. “I had this feeling of impotency – a superpower who couldn’t do anything…I still feel it…there’s no more frustration to be in and I felt frustrated.” She also mentioned a recent attack in Nigeria where some girls were taken away.
Greenfield also paid tribute to some of the girls whom she had met as being strong, saying she was traumatised after watching the drama “Chibok: Our Story” which preceded the panel discussion.
International human rights lawyer Emmanuel Ogebe, who led the advocacy to designate Boko Haram as a FTO, thanked the cast and producer/playwright of “Chibok:Our Story” Wole Oguntokun for giving voice to the Chibok situation, despite the government’s effort to silence the campaign.
He mentioned the sad news that Leah’s 16th birthday would come up in captivity and the good news that one of the escaped Chibok girls he brought to attend school in the US was graduating with an associate degree in science this same week.
Stating that he forgave Greenfield for the Obama administration’s delay in designating Boko Haram as a FTO because she delivered the good news, Ogebe noted that the Chibok girl graduated from college without one dime of US government support in the past five years. “We can’t bring back the girls, but we can all do something,” he added.
Ogebe and Greenfield had testified together before the US Congress on the day the FTO designation was announced. She represented the Obama administration; Ogebe and a Boko Haram victim represented civil society.
The panel event was part of the Currents Festival at Georgetown University where the Chibok play, performed in Nigeria and Rwanda, made its US debut to rave reviews.
Oguntokun, the acclaimed producer/playwright, is a protégée of Soyinka.
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