Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka has called on the Inspector-General of Police to revoke the regulation compelling Nigerians to produce Police reports before they could be treated in an emergency.
Just as he said he was not preparing to go to paradise, describing the other side (Hell) as full of more fun.
Addressing a rally to mark the fifth anniversary of the death of late the founding secretary of the Campaign for Democracy (CD) in Lagos, Mr Chima Ubani, Professor Soyinka argued that the law is anti-Human and irrelevant.
The rally took place at Allen Avenue Roundabout in Ikeja addressed the Theme: “Chima Ubani: Five Years After”.
It will recalled that Ubani, aged 42, died in a ghastly motor accident on September 21, 2005 on his way from Maidugiri after a mass rally organized by a coalition of organized Labour and Civil Society groups against increases in petroleum product prices.
Until his death, Ubani, was a leader of the pro-democracy movement in Nigeria and a former Amnesty International prisoner of conscience and had since 2003, been the executive director of the country's Civil Liberties Organization.
Soyinka said the late Ubani could have been alive if the various hospitals he was taken to after the accident had treated him immediately rather they were insisting on Police reports.
According to him, “These rules when enforced in such situations makes our society ridiculous and it hurts that someone like Ubani willing to give his life for the nation would be rejected for treatment.”
The nobel laureate, however, assured that the fundamental issues that Ubani died for has not been relegated adding that “these profound issues ay have been temporarily overshadowed but they would be pursued to the latter.”
Speaking further, he urged Nigerians to gird their loins as the nation makes another giant moves in re- defining itself in the 2011 polls by voting and protecting their votes.
In his remarks, Human Rights Lawyer and convener of United Action for Democracy, UAD, Mr Bamidele Aturu said that time has come for all progressives and civil society groups in Nigeria to come together under one umbrella to fight to save the nation.
The legal luminary called on Nigerians to resist any attempt from any government to sell the nation’s public institutions adding that “it is wrong to sell institutions that would make life unbearable for the people.”
Besides, he criticized the toll currently being operated by the Lagos State Government on the Lekki expressway.
In her solidarity message, President of the Campaign for Democracy (CD), Dr Joe Odumakin, said that the 2011 elections is the last opportunity Nigerians have to decide how they would be led.
She said “we must all struggle to ensure that we vote out those whose pedigrees have impacted negatively on the nation’s democracy.”
In her brief remarks, widow of the late Ubani, Ochuwa Ubani said that there is need for Nigerians to uphold the ideals and struggle for which Ubani died for.
According to her, “I was not an activist but with Chima’s death, y hear was challenged to become one because I realized that there is need to keep talking against the ills of society. My cry is not because Nigeria is backward. My cry is because many people have given up challenging the Leaders and those that made us backward.”
Comrades, you all know why we’re here today. It’s to remember a fighter who fell in the struggle. Now, there are many kinds of death; there are what are sometimes known as natural deaths, there are others which are definitely contrived, for which somebody should be held responsible. Among the direct deaths, you’ll remember all those who were assassinated on the roads, in their bedrooms during the reign of one of the most treacherous presidents we ever had in this nation. More assassinated on took place during those eight years than any time in our history.
But there have been other deaths also sometimes called force of nature; accidents and so on. I disagree with all those expressions. Some of those deaths bear a stigma; there is a stigma on those who are indirectly responsible and the rest of us.
Soyinka's words:
I made it a point of duty of coming here today because I have a special message for the Inspector-General of Police. And that message came about for the simple reason that I have asked myself again, again and again: Why do people like Chima Ubani die? Who is really responsible for their deaths? We know he died on active duty.
Chima was a young comrade, very close also to the Beko Ransome-Kuti with whom who incidentally started this party of the people which will be launched on Saturday and have been in existence all along but will be launched formerly this Saturday at Airport Hotel, Ikeja. You all are invited. And Beko, very, very close Comrade and Chima were in fact to come to Benin for the inaugural meeting but Chima was sent on an errand which was far more important and that was why he was not at the inaugural meeting on that day. And it is symbolic that this party will be launched a few days after this memorial.
Now, back to my message, and the thrust of this message was a funeral that just happened just about a few days ago. The deceased worked not too far from here. And why did he die? A careless driver mould him down with about five other people. This individual will be with us today if the stupid anti-human regulations that govern the conduct of those who are supposed to protect our security., if those rules were not in force. Maybe Chima also would have been alive today if those rules were not being enforced.
And what happened was a good Samaritan, as the expression goes, picked up this man who was still breathing, injured, still savable and he went to, I repeat, eight hospitals; they went from one hospital to the other and these clinics will not admit this patient unless he had a police report.
Look, I don’t know in what kind of society this kind of barbarism is allowed to happen; that a patient, a seriously injured individual, a citizen like ourselves, like any of you, will be taken from one clinic to the other, bleeding, and rejected because there is a regulation, I’m not even aware that there is even a law; I think it’s just a regulation that you must bring a police report.
Well, I don’t know if you get to the gates of the Paradise you need police report but if you do, I hope it’s not from our policemen which is guarding the gates of Paradise because I know all of us here will be rejected. I mean, I’m not going there anyway; I have no intention of going there. It’s more fun on the other side. But for those of you that are going there, if the gates are guarded by the Nigeria Police, angel Gabriel or whoever will turn you back and say go and say go and bring police report.
So, it’s a ridiculous society, which we live in and one of thing is, we owe many, many things to memory.
And this one, which is a very simple one, ok, we can talk about protection of ballot, it requires mobilisation, we can talk about democratic mandate, imperativeness of democracy in this country, we can talk about renegades or reprobates who still want to come back and rule this country; that requires organisation, we can talk about the ridiculous document of enslavement called the Nigerian Constitution, and issues which Chima Ubani was one of the pillars of organisation.
You remember that on the PRONACO, of course, I remember Chima’s work; a number of times he travelled throughout the whole nation, fire fighting, mobilising, to ensure that there was maximum participation in the fashioning of an alternative draft constitution that genuinely emerge from the people.
On that kind of absurd and others that Ubani died and it really hurts me that somebody who is engaged on behalf of you and me, can suffer an accident be rejected treatment in eight, I repeat, eight hospitals. This event took place in the last few days.
So, one of the things we can remember and establish against the present norm and remember and honour Ubani for, is to call on the Inspector-General of Police and insist, not next week, not next month, not next year but even today, that this stupid, thoughtless kind of regulation be revoked because it is anti-human.
