Nobel laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka has warned the Federal Government with the connivance of the National Assembly with the intention of returning the National Water Resources Bill rejected in 2018 by the Nigerian public.
Media report has it that the House of Representatives on July 23, 2020, referred to the National Water Resource Bill 2020to a “committee of whole,” for third reading and passage.
In a statement titled, ‘MLK’s Mighty Stream of Consciousness’ on Thursday, Soyinka warn against the return of the bill and the killings of some Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) by officials of the Department of the State Services (DSS) in Enugu on Sunday.
He said, “A roundly condemned project blasted out of sight by public outrage one or two years ago, is being exhumed and sneaked back into service by none other than a failed government, and with the consent of a body of people, supposedly elected to serve as custodians of the rights, freedoms and existential exigencies of millions. This bill – Bill on National Water resources 2020 – is designed to hand Aso Rock absolute control over the nation’s entire water resources, both over and underground.
“The basic facilitator of human existence, water – forget for now all about streams of righteousness! – is to become exclusive to one centralised authority. It will be doled out, allocated through power directives from a desensitised rockery that cannot even boast of the water divining wand of the prophet Moses. If the current presiding genius–and this applies equally to all his predecessors without exception – had a structured vision of Nigerian basic entitlements, Nigerians would by now, be able to boast the means of fulfilling even that minimalist item of COVID-19 protocols that call for washing one’s hands under running water! As for potable water, for drinking and cooking, let us not even begin to address such extra-terrestrial undertaking!
“What next for the exclusive list? The rains? I declare myself in full agreement with virtually every pronouncement of alarm, outrage, opprobrium and repudiation that has been heaped upon this bill and its parentage, both at its first outing and since this recent re-emergence. It is time to move beyond denunciations however and embark on practical responses for its formal deactivation and permanent internment. Let all retain in their minds that, from the same source that preached the “streams of righteousness” is encountered the promise of “no more floods, the fire next time.”
Citing the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement provoke by the killings of a black man by a United States cop and Martin Luther King’s speck against racism, the playwright noted that in the past few days, he had been worried over the watershed episode and was compelled to rephrase: Do Nigerian lives matter? Do farmers’ lives matter? Do IPOB lives matter? Do innocent lives matter? And most disturbingly: Do future lives matter?
He said, “One passage in Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream” has leapt to the forefront as a warning that relates to that final interrogatory – do future lives matter? And it does so in a most literal manner, one that MLK could never have envisioned! It persists in echoing through the mind, reinforced by the recent killings of innocent humanity – mostly youths — in Enugu, by state forces, under the pretext – shall we presume? – of preventing secessionist agitations?”
The Elder statesman added that the promulgators of the obscenity, high and low, should understand that the tranquil waters they think to control unjustly and grotesquely, would turn to be Martin Luther King’s “mighty stream of righteousness” that will overwhelm and sweep them off their complacent, and increasingly loathsome sectarian and conspiratorial heights.
He said, “One polluted stream of human existence compounds the next. A violation here joins forces with its tributary of resentment there yonder, all seemingly unconnected. Martin Luther King’s streams of righteousness turn into a mighty torrent of repulse that overwhelms the perpetrators but, alas, takes down much else as collateral, irreparable damage. That is the only cause for regret and – restraint. Hence our duty to position that anguished question frontally, and call the world to witness our open propagation of that challenge: Do future lives matter?
“Let Buhari and his myrmidons ponder that question in the deepest recesses of their hearts and minds. They should not bequeath to future generations the harvest of the grapes of wrath!”
