Veteran Nigerian writer, Prof. Wole Soyinka, on Tuesday defended singer David Adeleke, popularly called Davido, saying there was no need to apologize over a controversial video he recently shared that seemed to have demeaned the Muslim faith.
Davido had come under backlash over the now-deleted video, with a number of prominent Muslim faithfuls frowning at the content of the Jaye Lo music video in which Davido was featured by fast-rising Nigerian singer, Lagos Olori.
However, the Nobel laureate, in a statement on Tuesday, came to Davido’s defense, saying “No apology is required; None should be offered”.
Soyinka’s statement reads: “The following should not be needed, but we appear to inhabit a nation-space where memory deficiency has become an accreditation badge of competence in national affairs. I recall my intervention several years ago in an attempt to pillory the former Governor of Kaduna State, El Rufai, over some comment he had made that was considered derogatory to followers of Christianity.
“I forget the reference now, but I do distinctly recall another of a bank manager who, at Easter tide, referred to the risen Christ as a metaphor for the risen dough in the bakeries of Oshodi. Something along those lines. Under obvious pressure, he apologized, and I rebuked him for the gesture.
“There was nothing to apologize about, and that applied equally to El Rufai’s comments at the time. It should come as no surprise that I equally and absolutely disagree with Shehu Sani if indeed, as reported, he has demanded an apology from Davido on behalf of the Moslem community.
“No apology is required; None should be offered. Let us stop battening down our heads in the mush of contrived contrition; we know where contrition, apology, and restitution remain clamorous in the cause of closure and, above all, justice. Such apologies have not been forthcoming. In their place, we have the ascendancy of petulant censorship in the dance and music departments. Just where will it end?
“It goes beyond mere elation or euphoria and involves surrender of the ego to the mystical and sublime—through dance. The secularization of that medium stretches across religions and offers the artists a means of invoking a sense of spiritual community through a common act of self-surrender.
“As already admitted, I have not seen the clip, but I insist on the right of the artist to deploy dance in a religious setting as a fundamental given. Such deployment is a universal heritage, most especially applicable in the case of Islam, where a plot of land, even without the physical structure, can be turned, in the twinkling of an eye, into a sacral space for believers to gather and worship in between mundane pursuits.
“Let us learn to read it that way. Those who persist in taking offense to bed and serving it up as breakfast should exercise their right to boycott Davido’s products; no one quarrels with that right. However, it is not a cause for negative and incisive excitation.
“The greater responsibility is to face squarely the root issues of religion in the nation. That root issue is starkly stated thus: the sectarian appropriation of the power of life and death across a community of believers, other believers, and even non-believers alike, be it for real, imagined, or deliberately contrived offense.
“It was not Davido’s music that lynched Deborah Yakubu and continues to frustrate the cause of justice. Nor has it contributed to the arbitrary detention of religious dissenters—call them atheists or whatever—such as Mubarak Bala, now languishing in prison for his 38th month. These are the provocations where every citizen should exercise their capacity for revulsion.
“They are the issues deserving of, indeed exercising primary claim on, a nation’s capacity for righteous indignation. All else is secondary. Distractive piffle,” he stated.
