SOYINKA CALLS FOR WALL OF REMEMBRANCE FOR TERROR VICTIMS

NOBEL laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, has called on the global community to commence the erection of “Wall of Remembrance” for terror victims.
The call was contained in a lecture he delivered on the BringBackOurGirls initiative, to press for return of over 200 girls abducted by Boko Haram terrorists in Chibok, Borno State.

In the paper, entitled “Humanity Against The Narcissists of Death,” he noted that such move would ingraine the enormity of the deepening terror activities around the globe, instead of seeing the numbers of victims as mere statistical losses.
“Perhaps it is time that we constructed ‘Walls of Remembrance’ on which we shall inscribe the ever lengthening roll-call of victims of this ongoing resurgence, and their place names, in order to give flesh and blood to statistical losses sustained to blind doctrine, victims young and old, extinguished before the full bloom of their creative powers,” he said.
While urging the world to demand a true liberation from the terror orgy, he added that the choice was either true liberation or re-enslavement.
The lecture read in part: “Our predicament is universal, and this is what we have stressed from the very beginning. The nature of religious zeal that would routinely maim, kill, or enslave the object of its proselytising - that sometime euphemism for brainwashing - rather than let it thrive and contribute to humanity from within his or her limitations and uncertainties, from within its questions or skepticism, a mental cast that equates the mere absence of exhibitionist ardour or rigid conformism with impiety and apostasy, punishable by death or mutilation, is no different, in effect, from the tyrannical temper of the political dictator of any age.
“Both can only grasp the substance of their being through an inverse reflection of themselves, that is, in the complete and evident submission of their citizens, their flock, their human charge, in every aspect of their lives, without questions, without the concession of a possible alternative order of social being to whatever ideology or religious absolutes that they choose to peddle.
“Total submission, laced with adulation, remains the driving goal of the authoritarian temper - never mind that it is covered in mufti, khaki or clerical regalia.
“The objective remains - Power over others! And if ever there was an unholy marriage entered into to plague human existence, it is the obscene wedlock of the theocratic and secular mandates of power. Its issue has always been guaranteed as enslavement, misery, death and destruction. It is this that represents the greatest threat to human freedom, and its creative will.
“This is the proposition that acutely confronts the African continent today, following upon centuries of enslavement, colonialism, and the mutated versions of both in her dealings with the rest of the world. No wonder then, that we feel compelled to ask ourselves: what were our people’s struggles for liberation about? True Liberation? Or re-enslavement?
“Algeria has gone off the radar in recent times, but I must continue to stress this, especially on the continent: we would do well to keep our mind on that nation, not so long freed - and not even completely as yet - from a malady that is currently consuming other parts of our continent and the world.
“In our own interest, for the survival of our humanistic values, we could do worse than keep that nation in our minds as a crucial cautionary template, so that we can begin to grasp the enormity of Boko Haram, al Shabab, al Queda and other active carriers of the same spore of human deformity.
“It is only at our peril that we forget that we have been here before, and elsewhere, that there is nothing new about the extremes to which the power urge can exert itself.
“For those who perhaps were not born during that prolonged internal struggle for a people’s total liberation - and I am not speaking of the brutal struggle against French settler colonialism - or who were miraculously shielded from its vicious and prolonged intensity, or whose education has stopped short of the chilling testimonies of its survivors, I recommend a sobering and thoroughly authenticated compilation by Professor Karima Bennoune with the title - Your Fatwa does not Apply Here.
“All that is necessary is that we immerse ourselves in the tragedy of that nation to enable us to grasp the ruthless enterprise of terminal censors, the shadowy killers, the obsessed enemies of creativity, crippled minds whose notion of a divine mission is the eradication of all knowledge, and truncation of the reaches of the imagination.
“Then we would cease to be surprised by the fate that nearly overcame, and still threatens our neighbour Mali, that ancient warehouse of Africa’s intellectual heritage whose capital, Timbuktu, became a household name even in the racially jaundiced histories of European scholars.
“Perhaps it is time that we constructed Walls of Remembrance, on which we shall inscribe the ever lengthening roll-call of victims of this ongoing resurgence, and their place names, in order to give flesh and blood to statistical losses sustained to blind doctrine, victims young and old, extinguished before the full bloom of their creative powers.
“We are speaking of musicians, cineastes, writers, journalists, intellectuals, even the consumers of their products, condemned for daring to taste the forbidden fruit of knowledge. My mind immediately goes to - among others - fellow authors like Tahar Djaout to whose posthumously published work, ‘The Last Summer of Unreason,’ I had the honour of contributing a preface. “The kind of monument I speak of is one that should occupy the centre of every state capital of the African continent and of the African Diaspora. For those who still believe in, or simply dream a resurrection of the pan-African idyll, such a project offers us a purpose, a propelling motivation towards a holistic self-recovery.
“It will serve to remind us that we are a people to whom tolerance is a norm, knowledge an eternal pursuit, and pluralism the foundation of our communal ethos. Such monuments will represent milestones of the human journey towards enlightenment, a shrine to the real martyrs of human civilization.
“They will restore meaning and dignity to that word ‘martyrdom’ that has become hideously corrupted, degraded and blasphemed against by those who wage war against infants, yet wallow in their own perverse conception of bravery and valour. Nor must we neglect those who survived their mindless onslaught, damaged yet intact, and undaunted - the Malalas of our world.”