Wole Soyinka, Nobel laureate, has called on Igbo indigenes to ignore threats asking them to leave Yorubaland.
In a video circulating on social media, Grandson Adeyinka, a UK-based Nigerian, called on Igbo indigenes to leave south-west states.
In August 2019, Grandson was arrested in London for allegedly “stirring racial discrimination” against the Igbo and Fulani ethnic groups and also “encouraging terrorism”.
However, in the recent video, Adeyinka issued a 48-hour ultimatum to the Igbo, warning that those who refuse to leave will be dealt with.
“This is a warning to the Igbo people in Yorubaland. We are giving you a 48-hour ultimatum from today, Friday 23rd October, 2020 until Sunday, 25th of October, 2020 to leave Yorubaland,” he said.
“From Monday 26th of October, we will close the roads, stop all the vehicles across Yorubaland and every Igbo national will be dealt with accordingly. What happened at Ore in Ondo state in August 1967 are just highlights of what we are going to do from Monday, 26th October, 2020.”
In August 1967, there was a mid-west invasion (operation torch) in Ondo state between Nigerian and Biafran military forces during the civil war.
However, Soyinka, in a statement on Saturday, condemned the video, saying the threat “is the work of sick, cowardly minds”.
The professor of literature said Igbo indigenes should avoid being threatened by some persons who seek to create disharmony in the country.
“Undoubtedly in order to promote the video clip of an ethnic revanchist calling on Igbo to leave Yoruba land, this same lunatic fringe has exhumed, and embarked on circulating an ancient fabrication – several years mouldering in the grave – once attributed to me and vigorously denounced,” the statement read.
“That statement impudently expounds, as my utterance, what the Hausa want, what the Yoruba want, and what the Igbo want.
“Such an attribution – let me once again reiterate – is the work of sick, cowardly minds that are ashamed, or lack the courage, as the saying goes, “to answer their fathers’ names.” At least the current ethnic rabble-rouser has the courage of his convictions, not so the sick brigade of identity thieves.
“Normally, one should totally ignore the social dregs. However, in the present atmosphere where FAKE NEWS is so easily swallowed and acted upon without reflection, I feel once again obliged to denounce this recurrent obscenity.
“As for our brother and sister Igbo, I hope they have learnt to ignore the toxic bilge under which some Nigerian imbeciles seek to drown the nation.
“It is time also, I believe, to also enter the following admonition: one cannot continue to monitor and respond to the concoctions of these addicts of falsehood, and their assiduous promoters who have yet to learn to wipe the filth off their tablets.
“The patrons of social platforms should develop the art of discrimination. Some attributions are simply so gross that, to grant them even a moment’s latitude of probability diminishes the civic intelligence of the recipient.”