Nigeria Content Online

The level of political murders and attempted
assassination recorded over the last ten years is unprecedented in the
history of the country, Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, said yesterday in
Lagos.

Mr. Soyinka, who was chairperson at the launch of a
book, ‘A Micro-second Away from Death’ written by Wale Adedayo, a
former media to Ogun State governor, Gbenga Daniel, said although the
last ten years was a ‘deadly decade’ for the country, none of the
killings have been solved by security agencies.

The book is a recap on the upheavals that trails Mr.
Adedayo’s sojourn as Mr Daniel’s aide and his lucky escape from
gun-toting assassins in 2008.

“There is a lot of criminal cover-ups going on in our
country, and no matter how late, many of these facts will come out,”
Mr. Soyinka, who described the level of political murders and attempted
assassinations in the last decade as “mind-boggling,” said.

Mr. Soyinka also declared that he is convening a town
hall meeting to address the political intrigues rocking Ogun State on
December 18.

Reviewer of the book and dean of the school of
postgraduate studies, Babcock University, Ayandiji Aina, said the book
epitomises the “criminalisation of states in Africa, which is a symptom
of the non-development of the state, as captured in this book.”

Mr. Aina further said the book chronicles “the
behind-the-scene shenanigans of governance…in the greasily political
ecology of Ogun State.”

Paranoia governor

The reviewer also said the book is an indictment of
journalists who paint Mr. Daniel as a saint in a bid to pay their
bills. The governor, he said, “degenerated from an admired political
leader to a paranoid.”

Mr. Adedayo, who said the book was a documentation of
recent events for history, said the publication contains only 20% of
the original draft, as his editor and lawyer took out a number of
things they found too revealing.

Criticising the inability of the nation’s security
operatives to solve crimes, Mr. Adedayo noted that there is nothing
revealed in his book that the police, SSS, and force headquarters do
not know of.

“They have just refused to act right because the institutions of our young democracy are very, very weak,” he said.

Present at the event were former governor of Ogun State, Olusegun
Osoba, and governorship candidates in the state, Ibikunle Amosun, Lanre
Banjo, and Gbenga Obadara.