Soyinka tasks Jonathan on rising tension in the country

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  AfricCon Latest Nigerian Report: Soyinka tasks Jonathan on rising tension in the country
  Africcon Media, Nigeria
  
  From: Africcon Media – Nigeria
  
  Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka has called on President Goodluck Jonathan to take urgent steps to reduce mounting tension in the country. In a press statement entitled: Cool it, President Goodluck Jonathan, Soyinka said the flashpoints in the country had reached an alarming proportion that any responsible government would work assiduously to reduce and not exacerbate it.
  
  He said: “There is an opportunity in Rivers State to break this spiraling 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.” Recall that political tension had being on the rise in Rivers State in recent time owing to the frosty relationship between the state Governor, Mr. Chibuike Amaechi and the Presidency. Soyinka added that, “even the notoriously short Nigerian memory remains traumatized 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 National 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 derives 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.
  
  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.”
  But if I were the presiding officer, I wouldn’t let such motion, because truly the House has no business with such. The House should concentrate and think of more nationalistic issues than the grounding of aircraft. An aircraft bought for $48 million in a state, where poverty is ravaging the people. Some of the communities don’t have drinkable water. Is that what the House should be concerned about?