Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka has raised the alarm over the safety of a former Minister of Power and Steel Development, Olu Agunloye in Kuje Prison.
Agunloye, who was arraigned by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) at the FCT High Court yesterday, in connection with the $6 billion Mambilla scam, was remanded at the Kuje Prison by the judge.
Soyinka, in a statement said he wished to alert the nation and the government that there existed a justifiable, high-level concern for his safety.
He said, “His predecessor in office, the late Chief Bola Ige, was murdered in his bedroom by a professional assassin even while his police protection detail took time off, all at the same time, to a nearby eatery. Till today, those mystery killers have yet to be identified, arrested, and tried.
Soyinka said he had made it clear, even as recently as a few weeks ago, that Bola Ige’s murder was not unconnected with the Mambilla scam.
He said Agunloye worked closely with him, both within and outside routine police motions, to unmask Ige’s killers.
Soyinka said, “It would therefore amount to unpardonable complacency to propose that there are no forces sufficiently desperate to accord him the same fate as Bola Ige. That goal is made easier by the abrupt decision to remand him in prison.
“I have called for an independent, non-partisan commission to probe at length and in-depth, in public sittings, this scandal of expanding dimensions that has crippled the energy needs of a nation of two hundred million citizens over the past two decades. The latest development is sinister and alarming.
“Let it be understood that if anything happens to this pivotal witness while in custody, the inference will be heard loud, clear, and unambiguous,” he said.
