Harira Murder: Soyinka Protests, Cancels Anambra School Engagement

Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka has served a notice of cancellation of an engagement with an unnamed school in Anambra State scheduled for August in empathy with the murdered Harira Jibril and her four innocent children.

Harira was killed by yet-to-be-identified assailants in Anambra State often referred to as ‘unknown gunmen.’

Soyinka in a May 28, 2022 statement titled ”Drawing the Red Line On Infanticide,” which he made available to Prime Business Africa said he ”totally repudiates the killing of guests, of the armed, of innocents, vulnerable,” describing such as ‘the murder of humanity.”

Describing his decision as ”right” and the ”moment compelling” to cancel the Anambra School engagement which he is scheduled to attend in August, the Nobel Laureate, said the move is in ”empathy with those innocents whose scholastic careers have been so brutally annulled.

”I serve notice of cancellation of that engagement with the Anambra school, scheduled for August. The deaths of those innocents cannot be reversed, but we must begin, even yesterday, the process of reversing the mental trajectory that makes death from innocence the current norm of national existence.”

Making reference to the murder of Deborah Samuel, a Shehu Shagari College of Education student in Sokoto by her muslim school mates on allegation of blasphemy, Soyinka admitted tha he nearly cancelled his Abuja engagement as an expression of that revulsion, and in solidarity with the bereaved.

”In the end, I decided that this would not be the right gesture. It so happens that I also have an engagement in Anambra, at a school where, for all I know, the children of Mr. Jibril Ahmed were enrolled, or would soon be enrolled, a sanctuary of learning for the one yet in the womb of the murdered Harira.

”It need not have been that very institution, but it is to just such a place of creative formation that they were all innately predetermined. Collective action is not always easy to come by – except of course by coercion, which is what we are witnessing in the activities of militant groups in the East. That, however, is not the issue, this being a crossroads that the Anambra people will navigate themselves. The cold-blooded murder of guests in our home is however not merely a national issue but a violation of the much touted values of the black race.

”We must begin somewhere, “draw a line” – however individual and limited. I totally repudiate the killing of guests, of the unarmed, of innocents , the vulnerable, indeed, the murder of humanity,” Soyinka concluded in his statement.

Zita Offor