By Niyi Odebode and Mudiaga Affe
Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has called on the Acting President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, to set up a judicial commission of inquiry into the Halliburton scandal allegedly involving three former heads of state and some prominent Nigerians.
Soyinka, who made the call during a news conference in Lagos on Friday, also advised Jonathan to insist on seeing the ailing President Umaru Yar‘Adua.
He described as an embarrassment the scandal linked to three former presidents–the late Gen. Sani Abacha, Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar (rtd) and Chief Olusegun Obasanjo–among other top Nigerians.
The top Nigerians were alleged to have received about $180m in bribes from American Company, Kellog Brown & Root (KBR) Inc., the engineering subsidiary of Halliburton, to be retained to build Africa‘s first liquefied natural gas plant in Bonny, Rivers State.
Soyinka said that Nigerians were being ridiculed outside the country because of the failure of government to investigate the scandal.
He said, ”I am not sure how much the people of this nation are willing to tolerate, but outside, I can report to you that it is nothing but amazement and also a feeling of contempt that the international Halliburton scandal of that magnitude has been treated with such casualness and indifference by both the government and the people of this nation”.
Soyinka recalled that the former Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Mr. Michael Aondoakaa, once promised to get the report on the scandal from the United States of America.
He, however, lamented that nothing of value was done in spite of the fact that prominent Nigerians were mentioned in the scandal.
Soyinka said, ”Names have been named, figures have been quoted, indictments are there in the court of law. And in a country where there is freedom and access to information, the former so-called attorney-general of this nation went to the United States. Sometime he said he was going to get to the bottom of it, he never reported anytime and nobody asked him; nobody in government”.
He stated, ”I am asking civil rights organisations to start insisting on an independent judicial commission into the Halliburton scandal. We are talking about billions of dollars bribery paid to those who are supposed to manage the resources of this nation. They put it into their private pockets. We are talking of serial corruption, in which it looks like virtually one Head of State just hands over the cash cow to the other”.
Speaking on Yar‘Adua, the Nobel Laureate said that he was disgusted by a group, which was capitalising on the ill-health of the President and accused the group of planting stories in the media.
Soyinka said if the President was capable of addressing the nation, he should have done so.
Faulting the visits of Moslem and Christian leaders to Yar‘Adua, he said, ”This idea of surrogate communication by those who have absolutely no legal or constitutional standing in this nation, these specially arranged meetings and obscene procedure, insult the intelligence of over 100 million people.
"I personally feel insulted about what is going on and I am encouraging Nigerian citizens to come out and say ‘enough is enough. You do not treat a human being in this way".
He added, ”He (Jonathan) has a responsibility, both to himself and the cabinet, to the legislature, to the nation, to demand, to insist on seeing the condition of Yar‘Adua, preferably with appointed doctors and then report back to the nation, take the necessary action and compel the legislature to take action”.
Meanwhile, the Nigerian playwright has attacked the British Broadcasting Corporation for televising a documentary series that derided Lagos as a slum.
In an interview published by The Guardian of London on Thursday, Soyinka described the TV documentary as ”condescending, colonialist and patronising”.
The activist added that the programme displayed ”the worst aspects of colonialist and patronising” attitudes to Africa.
The Punch
