Wole Soyinka warns of danger in remanding ex minister, Agunloye in prison

Following the remand of ex-power minister, Olu Agunloye, in prison pending the hearing of his bail application, Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, has alerted the nation and the government, to concerns he has about Mr Agunloye’s safety.

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), on Wednesday, arraigned Mr Agunloye at an Abuja High court on corruption charges over a failed multi-billion-dollar Mambilla Hydropower project.

But in a statement by his publicist, Jahman Anikulapo, Mr Soyinka opined that his remand in Kuje prison, pending resumption of his case by the presiding judge, gave “justifiable, high-level concern for his safety.”

According to Mr Soyinka, Mr Agunloye’s predecessor in office, the late Bola Ige, was murdered in his bedroom by professional assassins while his police protection detail all took time off at a nearby eatery. He recalled that till today, the mystery killers have yet to be identified, arrested, and tried.

“I have made it clear, even as recently as a few weeks ago, that Bola Ige’s murder was not unconnected with the Mambilla scam. Olu Agunloye worked closely with me, both within and outside routine police motions, to unmask Ige’s killers. It would therefore amount to unpardonable complacency to propose that there are no forces sufficiently desperate to accord him the same fate as Bola Ige. That goal is made easier by the abrupt decision to remand him in prison,” he said.

Mr Soyinka noted that he had called for an independent and non-partisan commission to probe at length and in-depth, in public sittings, the scandal of expanding dimensions that have crippled the energy needs of the nation over the past two decades, adding that the latest development was sinister and alarming.

He warned that being a pivotal witness if anything happened to Mr Agunloye while in custody, the inference would be heard loud, clear, and unambiguous.