Prof. Wole Soyinka has claimed the All Progressives Congress (APC) was punished at the Osun governorship election for committing “sacrilege” against Bola Ige, a late former Minister of Justice.
In an interview with Channels Television, Soyinka said it was shocking that the APC could make someone who was implicated in Ige’s murder one of its executives.
Although he did not mention the name of the APC member, the Nobel laureate has severally accused Iyiola Omisore, National Secretary of the APC, of knowing about Ige’s death.
Omisore, a former deputy governor of Osun, was arrested and detained over the assassination, but he denied any involvement.
He said: “When the results began to come in, I had just returned (from overseas). It was like a welcome present because I saw that party (APC) being punished for that act of sacrilege.
“The two parties (APC and PDP) have become very confusing to start with. Members have moved across so much. There has been so much inter-marriage and the bloodline has diluted in many aspects, being polluted in many aspects.
“It even got to a stage where a prominent member of the APC actually articulated the sentiment of ‘Oh, come and join us and your sins will be forgiven’.
“It didn’t surprise me too much that somebody who has been so heavily implicated in the death of a prominent member of that party, Bola Ige, he is a founding member, that his memories should be so thrashed by consulting one of the prominent figures who featured in the events – forget whether he was innocent of the actual crime or not – was heavily implicated in the humiliation of that individual, that founding member of that party who was also the minister of justice of this nation.
“To actually catapult one of those crime suspects and proven contributors, and to find that that person has been given a position in that party (APC), in governance, and after the President (Muhammadu Buhari) had actually inaugurated a re-examination of that episode amongst other crimes, that is quite a bit of shock. And I mentioned at a time, that is a bit of sacrilege. And remember, this Osun is Bola Ige’s state.”
Ige, an Attorney General of the Federation (AGF) in the administration of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, was murdered on December 23, 2001.
