Prof. Wole Soyinka condemned the killing of a pregnant woman and her four children by “unknown gunmen” in Anambra State, who continue to wreak havoc in the South-East.
On May 15, 2022, the gunmen murdered Harira, 32, and her four children, ages nine, seven, five, and two.
Soyinka, in a statement on Saturday titled, “Drawing the red line on infanticide,’’ said the horror recently afflicted on the people of Anambra and other Nigerians was redoubled for him personally because the news reached him outside the country while participating in an event of youth empowerment–a college graduation.
The playwright stated, “The anticipated question surfaced again and again: What kind of mind is capable of such bestiality? And yet it happens, again and again. We know who these killers are, they live among us. Sometimes I undergo the feeling that I actually know them, that I have encountered them, have heard them and perhaps even read them. And we know that unless they are pre-emptively denounced and exposed, they will strike and strike again. Their actions reduce us all, tarnish us, and question our humanity.
“At the Abuja event (one-year remembrance of the late Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Ibrahim Attahiru), exactly a week ago, I proposed the need to develop the collective sense of a Lowest Common Denominator in the seizure of our humanity. Any act that attempts to drag us below, or remove that rung of the human ladder should be answered by a total community shutdown– or other equivalence- of its own accord, until that rung is fully reclaimed. The Anambra infanticidal orgy is one such. Deborah Samuel’s mob immolation was another. Response to such abominations transcends the mandatory functions of security agencies.’’