My dear Professor Wole Soyinka,
Fraternal greetings to you. I read with consternation your tirades against my person and my magazine, Conscience International, in your new book, “InterInventions, Between Defective Memory and the Public Lie.”
My first thought was not to dignify you with a response but I have been inundated with phone calls and electronic mails from friends, admirers and family members, both home and in diaspora, seeking to know the truth about you and your spurious allegations.
So, for the sake of posterity, I shall set matters straight again and use this opportunity to present you to the world as a consistent, unrelentless liar that you are with a knack for hypocrisy.
1. You alleged that i run errands for the late General Sani Abacha. In your words, i made myself available for hire to the “most noxious of Nigerian rulers, both at the central and state levels, most notably, the infamous rogue and murderer, General Sani Abacha.”
I make bold to say that i was never appointed by the late Abacha neither did he at anytime commissioned me to blackmail you. The expose I did on you that revealed your shady deals were a product of my patriotism and nationalistic duty which I owe millions of Nigerians as a Reporter and an internationally acclaimed Publisher as testified by you in your previous books and the current one.
My grouse against you is that you parade yourself as part of the solution to the Nigerian question and rather than profer solution, you compound the existing problems, presumably because of a selfish inordinate ambition.
2.On former the governor of Ogun State, Otunba Gbenga Daniel. It is more painful that you will denigrate such a man of integrity and humility albeit falsely just to gain cheap popularity and disparage his hard earned reputation of godliness. I have never had any open discussion with Gbenga Daniel about you in any manner. So the balderdash you wrote about our relationship must have been a figment of your destructive imagination.
You also lied that Gbenga Daniel sent me to someone in Oyo State. You lied again because ever before being in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), I have had a relationship with the two former governors, Rasheed Ladoja and Adebayo Alao-Akala. For your information, Alao-Akala is my cousin.
Both of them are my aburos. So tell me, which governor are you referring to that Gbenga sent me to? Stop telling lies that you cannot substantiate.
You also mentioned that we are running to governors to destroy people. Who and who have we destroyed? When Bola Ahmed Tinubu was the governor of Lagos State, he was performing and we published 10 pages of his good works for Lagosians to see without collecting a dime from him because ours is a conscientious public service. I challenge you again to present one, two or three editions of our magazines which we published to attack the opposition over the past 18 years.
However, I am also not surprised with your utterances and that of your accomplice, Mr. Wale Adedayo, who once libelled me. I sued him to court and his suit number was ID/892/2009 at an High Court in Lagos and for five years, your collaborator evaded service . He knows I am still after him with court papers for defrauding me because he took my money and absconded.
3. You will recall that you filed a suit against the Conscience Magazine and myself but for four years, you went to bed without prosecuting your case. On arrival in Nigeria sometime in 1998, you addressed a press conference and described my magazine as world’s largest circulating magazine. Thank you for the milage you gave us. But I kept on wondering why an eminent scholar like you will abandon a legal suit you started for more than two decades. I probably know the answer. You wanted a Judge who would do your bidding but you failed flagrantly to buy justice.
Unsatisfied, you also dragged me to the famous Justice Chukwudifu Oputa Panel without service on us. You manipulated the process and gave evidence without calling the person involved. You used your influence again and Oputa granted you a privilege without considering the fact that we still needed to be summoned. You had a field day with your malicious and destructive evidences which were laced with total lies.
We were only opportuned to know all of these on a national Television, hence we filed a petition against the injustice of the Oputa panel for failure to invite us. We requested that he brings you back to the witness box which the panel reluctantly acceded to knowing that scandal was about to hit it. The law gave us the privilege and we disgraced you with evidences. The allegations and evidences against you were too glaring but you used your influence again. You urged the Oputa panel to adjourn sine dine.
If we had finished the case with you then, nothing would have saved your face from the stigma of your evil manipulations. Till date, the Oputa panel didn’t write any report because everything went against you. We kept on pressurising you to continue the suit and luckily, one of the judges was assigned the case and despite our objections, he began hearing the case without serving us notice and he proceeded in taking your evidences. What a travesty.
We got to know of this through some concerned persons who witnessed the proceeding. This gave us the impetus to challenge the kangaroo attempt and unfortunately, the Judge was one of our witnesses in the suit you filed against us. Despite our suit and motion against the Judge himself, he refused to disqualify himself and we went on appeal where he was eventually disqualified. And since then, you have refused to to pursue your case deliberately because there is no judge of your choice.
MY dear Soyinka, who then is delaying justice? Now, you are crying wolf because God is not on your side and because you are always a liar. I want you to do a self appraisal and ask yourself why you are always attempting to reap where you did not sow. Think about the controversies surrounding you and Major R. Salawu, formerly of the Federal Road Safety Commission on the one hand and Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, former governor of Osun State, on the other hand. You fought Salau over the Federal Road Safety Commission and it is a public knowledge that you are fighting Oyinlola over board chairmanship of the Black Culture and International Understanding.
4. You have called me names in your previous books. You called me a rapist and in your new book, you called me a fugitive. I challenge you to tell the world the name of the rape victim, the charge number, address of the court, name of the Judge. Over the years, you have failed to do this. Instead of defending the allegations against you, you went on to attack my magazine and my humble self with the illusion that you are untouchable.
My request from you before you continue your dangerous, destructive campaign of calumny against us, you must first of all depose and establish that the allegations are not real. You have to clear yourself so that the world will know that you are speaking the truth.
5. Remember that I am a veteran in politics and I challenge you that you have really lied against me. The onus of proof is on you. It is you that must deny those facts. These are court papers that we have published. I want to advise you to stop blackmailing people, stop writing books of lies to elicit sympathy and make illegal money.
Finally, I challenge you to a public debate on radio and television and I will prove it that you are an endemic liar. I am waiting for you. I have all the documents of your fraudulent practises and I will expose you the more.
Do not forget in a hurry what you suffered at the Oputa Panel. I await you again.
And let me point out that my lawyer, Rotimi Jacobs, is one of the greatest anti corruption crusaders in this country. He has used all his life to defend good causes and issues of the less privileged. Since his days as the deputy head of the Gani Fawehinmi Chamber he has lived above board and established himself as a dogged and reliable fighter against social ills in the society. Though, your (Wole Soyinka) style has always been spreading lies and raising falsehood against whoever attempts to uncover your treachery and make public your hypocritical personality. Rotimi Jacobs is undaunted and can never be intitmidated to let the world see you the way you are.
Chief Abiola Ogundokun
Publisher, Conscience Magazine International.
