By Terh Agbedeh
Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka has made a passionate appeal to Boko Haram insurgents to release all the girls they abducted from Government College, Chibok, Borno State.
A total 234 girls were kidnapped by the jihadists on April 15 after a shoot-out with security forces. About 40 of them have escaped to freedom so far.
Wole Soyinka
Soyinka made the plea at the Port Harcourt World Book Capital 2014, echoed by former Head of State, Abdulsalami Abubakar, and former Education Minister and former World Bank Vice President, Obiageli Ezekwesili.
In his keynote address titled, “Republic of the Mind and the Thralldom of Fear,” Soyinka condemned the abductions, saying it is time to end the menace.
“Let’s not beat about the bush, let us face the ultimate horror that confronts us, so we know the evil that hangs over us as a people,” he said.
He warned that to remain in denial is to betray “our own offspring” and to consolidate the ongoing crimes against humanity.
“There is no alternative: we must take the battle to the enemy. And this is no idle rhetoric – the battlefield stretches beyond the physical terrain. We are engaged in the battle for the mind – which is where it all begins, and where it will eventually be concluded.”
Soyinka insisted that Boko Haram does not articulate the views of other Muslims and urged President Goodluck Jonathan to do more in tackling insecurity.
Ezekwesili, accompanied by Koko Kalango, PHWBC 2014 Project Director and founder of Rainbow Book Club, called on everyone present to stand up and join in demanding that we “bring back our daughters.”
She added: “We had no idea what Prof (Soyinka) was going to speak to, but we had as part of this programme a session to call on all of you to stand with us in solidarity for the school girls that are still missing, whose situation we have no idea of.
“So we would like you to please rise and to make a collective demand for our daughters to be released, for our daughters to be rescued. Join us in declaring that Port Harcourt, as the book capital of the world, makes a collective demand for the rescue of our school girls.”
Ezekwesili is also Chairperson Trustee of the Rainbow Book Club.
She said it is often a difficult project to get girls into school in the first place “so we call together, bring back all our daughters.”
Abdulsalami commended the Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi, for his intervention in education and stressed the need to keep peace in the country, because “if there is no peace, there will be no time to read these books.”
Jonathan, represented by his Special Assistant on Documentation, Molara Wood, commended the Rainbow Book Club and the Rivers State Government for partnering to win the UNESCO designation of Port Harcourt as world book capital.
Amaechi reiterated his administration’s commitment to literature and education, pledging to continue to promote it. Education and agriculture are the keys to ending the Boko Haram menace, he added.
