Nobel laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka, has demanded that the Islamic authorities in the country remove Prof Ibrahim Maqari, the Deputy Chief Imam of Abuja’s National Mosque, for supporting the lynching of Deborah Samuel Yakubu, a Christian student of the Shehu Shagari College of Education, Sokoto State, by her colleagues.
Soyinka said on Saturday that Maqari should “be tried under any existing laws that approximate hate rhetoric, incitement to murder and abuse of office.
“The young woman, Deborah, he declared, deserved her death.
“Professor Imam Ibrahim Maqari however insists, with a handful of others including a vocal serving policeman quite recently, that there is no remorse attached to the torture and lynching of a young student on this earth we all share.
To anyone who cares to listen, Maqari has implicitly directed his followers to take the law into their own hands in the name of religion, and in a nation beset on all sides by wars of ultra-nationalism and religious fanaticism.
“If Professor Grand Imam Maqari can draw a line in blood, the rest of the community of equal rights must proceed to draw their own, but they will do so in less primitive, bloodthirsty mode, in full respect of human dignity.
