Professor Wole Soyinka Speaks On Why He Rejected The Centenary Award

The Nobel laureate said he rejected Nigeria's centenary award bestowed on him because of the inclusion on the honours list of the late Nigerian tyrant, General Sani Abacha and other known killers and looters of Nigeria's treasury.

In a rejection note headlined "The Canonisation of Terror", Soyinka observed that the inclusion of Abacha on the list does not only show a failure of a moral rigour but it calls into question "the entire ethical landscape into which this nation has been forced by insensate leadership".

He reminded those who have forgotten so soon that General Sani Abacha was a vicious usurper under whose authority the lives of an elected president and his wife M.K.O and Kudirat Abiola were snuffed out.

It was under Abacha, he said, that assassinations became routine, that torture and other forms of barbarism were enthroned as the norm of governance.