CITIZENS COMPASS– NOBEL Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka has condemned the outcry generated by the Muslim/Muslim presidential ticket as Nigerians head towards general elections next year.
He described the controversies surrounding the Muslim/Muslim ticket as a reflection of how the country has been fractured along religious lines and its citizens made to look different from one another right from childhood.
I think we’ve all come here with a lot of negative image hanging on our necks. And also some measure of hope, some modicum of illumination,” Soyinka said.
The Nobel Laureate, acknowledging the presence of secondary school students in uniform whom he said events like that for him were primarily for, also used the opportunity to condemn the controversies triggered by the Muslim/Muslim presidential ticket and whether students should be allowed to wear religious garbs to schools.
There is one other thing going on in my mind. And I think we have the experts here who will talk about it. There are some school children over there. And one wonderful thing about them for me is that they are in uniform. In other words I cannot tell which one is a Christian, which one is a Muslim, which one is an Orisa worshipper, which one is a Zoroastrian, which one is a Buddhist. They are school children.
“They are equal and they are being encouraged to see one another as human beings, not as separate creatures. And I want to be informed if it is against democracy that schools insist that uniforms be worn by children so that they are not distinguished in a very dramatic way. So that they do not look at one another as different.
–Vanguard
