Soyinka: Democracy Day is an insult

The literary giant said May 29 only reminded the nation of heightened hope and expectations progressively abandoned by those at the helm of affairs.

In a statement entitled: "Democracy When", Soyinka said: "May 29, not only marked the inauguration of missed opportunities, it was a day that launched an era of cynically mocked, degraded, and finally openly jettisoned opportunities."

He said "June 12" stood out as a historic date for the peaceful determination of national destiny, regretting that frantic efforts were being made to consign it into oblivion.

Soyinka said if time had healed the wound of the truncation of "June 12", "this has never implied the embrace of amnesia".

"The celebration of May 29 as ‘Democracy Day’ amounted to perpetuation of a symbol of deception, of betrayal, of hypocrisy and lust for power," he said.

He asked those "who insist on perceiving 1999 electoral exercise as an expression of popular will" to learn from the confessional statements of the participants in that "charade".

Soyinka lamented that the Yar’Adua administration which succeeded the Obasanjo government took on an unnecessary baggage of egotistical symbolism while still struggling for legitimacy after its own tarnished ascendancy.

To him, President Umaru Yar’Adua would have done better by dissociating himself from an antecedence that violated all the principles associated with free choice and electoral integrity.

"All that this regime had to do was to ignore the fictious date, let it sink into the cesspit of an individual’s obsession and proceed with its own programme of service to the nation," he said.

Soyinka likened May 29 to an "inauguration date of the era of darkness, both metaphysical and palpable that has seen a nation of envied material and human endowments groping its way through the twilight of marginal vision into the dark of resignation."

"It marked the descent into the graveyard of energy and light, aborting productivity at birth, and turning a once vibrant, pulsating nation into yet another black hole in the nightly geography of globe," he fumed.

The Nobel laurete maintained that "May 29 marked the inauguration of a spate of assassinations, the likes of which the nation had never known, citing a slain Minister of Justice and Attorney-General.

He recalled that in utter insensitivity to public opinion, the prominent accused "was escorted triumphantly into the legislative chambers and elevated to a position reserved for him by the ruling party.

Soyinka pointed out that the assault on Odi and Zaki Biam, the escalation of tension in the oil-rich Niger-Delta, the third term game, violation of rule of law and the constitution and high scale corruption had their foundation in May 29.

"May 29 inaugurated the handing over of entire states to the rule of self-confessed, self-celebrating, violent prone and proud thugs in defiance of the most minimal pretence of order.

"May 29 marked the degradation of all symbols of authority, a descent into a state of political anomie that will haunt the nation for decades to come," he stressed.

Warning against the continuation of the yearly celebration, Soyinka declared: "The national provocation has gone far enough, but evidently, the culture of appropriate response has yet to learn how far it must go.

"Let those who insist on foisting this degradation on the nation understand that, wherever and whenever symbols of cooption for the perpetuation of a lie are hoisted, they constitute an invitation to tear down the flag".