What Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe and Others Have Done To End The Darfur Crisis

Nigeria received more bad news from Darfur last week as seven Nigerian soldiers with the UN/AU Peace Keeping Mission were killed by one of the lawless terrorist militias.

The fact is, the only solution to the question of Darfur is to sack the oppressive regime of President, Prime Minister, and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces--Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir. Because, there is no democracy in Sudan, but a despotic government that continuues to violate the rule of law and tramples on the UN Charter on Human Rights.

What Wole Soyinka, Chinua Achebe and Others Have Done To End The Darfur Crisis

The most lionized Nigerian writer, Nobel Laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka has been the most vocal African writer on the Darfur Crisis since the National Association of Seadogs (Pyrates Confraternity) (NAS) Capoon, Andrew Obinna Onyearu addressed it in his "DARFUR: A Genocide We Can Stop" at the 9th Annual Wole Soyinka Lectures Series, held on Friday, July 14, 2006, at the Cannel View Hotel, in Calabar, seven days after I left the city. And exactly a year ago on September 20, 2006, Soyinka accused the Arab League of complicity in the genocide in Darfur in a paper he delivered in Paris at the 50th anniversary of the First Congress of Black Writers and Artists.
Soyinka said:
“It is depressing to observe the studied indifference of the Arab family to the criminality of one of its members, a nation historically placed as a cultural bridge between two races”.

“The Arab family has steadfastly refused to call Sudan to order, indeed placed obstacles in the way of sanctions.”

Soyinka accused the the rampaging Jajaweed "devil on horseback" as the “arrowhead of a state policy of ethnic cleansing,” who have a “naked language of racial incitement” with “claims of race superiority, complemented by the language of contempt and disdain for the indigenous African”.

Soyinka did not want the African Union (AU) peace keeping mission to leave Darfur, because it would be “preparing to abandon the peoples of Darfur, leaving them to the mercy of murdering, raping and burning gospellers of race doctrine”.

“When a deviant branch of that family of nations flouts, indeed revels in the abandonment of, the most basic norms of human decency, is there really justification in evoking the excuse that protocol requires the permission of that same arrogant and defiant entity?”

But like the late Nigerian dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha, the head of Sudan, President, Prime Minister, and Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces--Lt. Gen. Omar Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir, is deaf to reason and would prefer to kiss the dust than kiss the UN Peace Keeping Force. He has only accepted a joint AU/UN hybrid support operation, because China and Russia gave him their assurance that they would protect his selfish interests in Darfur and his policy of Arabization and Islamicization. So, the AU/UN only recently got the permission of the government in Khartoum to intervene and stop the genocide in Darfur.

I had an insider in Darfur who was a senior officer in the military who corresponded with me and sent me the details of the intricate local and international political intrigues of the bloody conflicts in Darfur and I reported the crisis on The DARFUR Blog I started to join global efforts to save the millions of innocent refugees suffering and dying in Darfur. I told Jan Pronk, the former Special Representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations in Sudan that my insider in Darfur was working on a book on the realities and Jan Pronk was looking forward to the book until the Sudanese Armed Forces accused Jan Pronk of "waging psychological warfare on the armed forces" and demanded his deportation after Jan Pronk published thoughts on the military defeats of the Sudanese Army in his weblog. The government in Khartoum forced the former UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan to recall Jan Pronk to the UN Office in New York for consultations. And later, Jan Pronk left the UN to become a Professor of Theory and Practice of International Development at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague.

Another highly esteemed Nigerian writer who has become outspoken on the Darfur Crisis is Prof. Chinua Achebe.

"African nations will realize the Bantu maxim ' a human is human because of other humans,' Achebe said. And he recalled how African nations watched whilst the Rwanda holocaust occurred before their eyes.
Achebe said:
"It is said of the Jewish Holocaust that the world slept and did not know. Today, there is perhaps nowhere on earth where the crime of genocide is more glaring than in Darfur, Sudan. In that region, domestic bigotry in juxtaposition with foreign multinational oil interests has served to create a humanitarian emergency of epic proportion."

"The world community has responded to this crisis, albeit belatedly; however, much more needs to be done to address a most tragic situation. When President Bush first declared that what was happening in Sudan was genocide, one African president left his country and travelled to America to 'correct Bush' and instructed him that what was happening was rebellion against the government of Sudan."

"As hundreds of thousands perish in Darfur, it is African nations and their leaders, this time, that have become silent spectators. The African Union (AU) must play a far more central role in bringing about suitable solution to the crisis in the Darfur region. By galvanizing their resources, African nations will realize the Bantu maxim 'human is human because of other humans' which represents the African communal viewpoint."

I have noted three Nigerian writers who have stepped out of the silent crowd of the Nigerian elites to save Darfur from becoming another Rwanda, because they are worthy of emulation.

I have some classified mails from my insider whilst he was still in Darfur, but I cannot publish them, because he would prefer them to remain classified. He has decided to hold on to his dairies and publish the book later.