Fortuitously, Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, came down hard yesterday on former President Olusegun Obasanjo for his visit on Thursday to the Maiduguri family home of the slain leader of the terrorist group, Boko Haram, Mohammed Yusuf. Soyinka, in a statement, described the visit, on a day the United Nations office in Nigeria was holding a memorial service in honour of the 23 victims who died in the August 26 suicide bombing of its Abuja office that was sponsored by the terrorist group, as ill advised and ill-timed. In the statement titled, ‘Blessed are the Peacemakers?’ Soyinka wondered why Obasanjo had chosen “that moment of a collective empathy with victims” to visit their killers. According to him, President Goodluck Jonathan owes Nigerians and the international community an explanation on whether Obasanjo’s visit was state sponsored or not. Obasanjo, during his visit to Maiduguri , met with some family members of the late Yusuf for about 90 minutes, and urged them to forget the past and give peace a chance, adding, “this is a personal initiative. I urge you to forgive and forget the past. I plead with you; give me the chance to mediate between the family and government.” The former president, who arrived Maiduguri at 11.40am, was received by the state deputy governor, Alhaji Zanna Umar Mustapha. Yusuf was killed while in the custody of the police in Maiduguri after his arrest by soldiers of the Joint Task Force. His killing, extra-judicially, triggered the initial wave of reprisal attacks on security agents and government officials that was unleashed on the nation by his associates. Soyinka, who could not attend the memorial for the bomb victims due to what he called “excessively short notice,” said inasmuch as he wanted to, he was relieved that he could not make it given the circumstances of Obasanjo’s visit to the late Yusuf’s home. He said: “My chagrin cannot be measured when I discovered on arrival that at the very moment – or thereabouts – when this nation bowed her head in sorrow and contrition before the whole world, in an attempt to come to terms with her own causative deficiencies in whatever area – and I do not imply simply security - a former head of state of this very nation appropriated that moment of a collective empathy with victims to pay a visit to the home of one who, albeit dead, was the acknowledged head of the murder organisation, Boko Haram, an organisation that blithely accepted, as usual, responsibility for this unconscionable act, one among equally heinous and yet ongoing atrocities. “What has happened here is a pitiable spectacle that covers a nation in shame – and let there be no mistake, it is anything but passive. It is an act of aggression, a slap in the face of the bereaved and wounded, including the permanently disfigured. “It desecrates the memory of the fallen and casts doubts on any claim to humanism and capacity for compassion of the Nigerian people. It has turned the commemoration event into a charade, a ceremonial gathering, an empty husk without the germ of authentic fellow feeling. “Let others count their gains and losses, and rationalise this travesty as they will. For me, as a Nigerian, I feel diminished by this descent into exhibitionist emptiness, where a former head of state condoles with violators even where a serving president presides over a gathering of victims.” Although Soyinka condemned the extra-judicial killing of Yusuf, he said Boko Haram’s resort to violence as a tool of vengeance should not preclude the necessity for a collective stance against the tyranny of terror. According to Soyinka, given Obasanjo’s status as a former president, his military background and his recent emissary of the United Nations to war-torn zones, he should have known the difference between peacemaking, peacekeeping, peace enforcement, negotiations, appeasement, capitulation and their multiple nuances. “Since, according to reports, he also included in his visit an agenda of seeking avenues of peace between the nation and a splinter group that is committed to its own vision of nationhood, has sworn openly to actualise that vision by the most violent means at its disposal, we must assume that Obasanjo took all these factors into consideration before assuming the role of peacemaker. No one will deny him, or indeed anyone, the right to assume the onerous task of mediation. “Timing, however, is a crucial part of leadership intelligence and sensibility. It is in fact a bedrock formation of military training. Was it an accident of timing, or was it deliberate, that this “ex-militrician” president undertook his visit at the very time when certainly the major part of the nation – either physically or in spirit, mostly the latter – attempted to come together in communion with the souls of the departed, and in sympathy with the trauma of the survivors? “Let us not mince words here - this must be one of the crassest, most insensitive, self-ingratiating acts ever recorded in the history of any nation in recent memory. “It is known as an ego trip. You do not play ‘statesman’ over the mangled bodies of victims, least of all where their violators insist on the righteousness of their very conduct. “Nowhere has there been an expression of remorse, or concession of error, from the violators, nothing but gleeful accents of triumphalism. That a former head of state should pay a visit to the symbol – dead or alive – of the massacre of innocents anywhere and under any condition, at the very moment of memorialising the victims, is a despicable, opportunistic and revolting act that desecrates the memories of the victims,” Soyinka added. The laureate also criticised the former president for pleading with the late terrorist leader’s family that they should bury the hatchet, adding: “This plea, destined for the operatives of Boko Haram – if indeed true – during the commemorative service for its victims, is difficult to swallow... It is too gross to contemplate.” He said Nigeria is exposed to global contempt because of its leaders’ culture of appeasement. “It goes beyond politics and involves sheer decency, sensitivity and the capacity for just compassion. It is gross, indecent, worse than pornographic, an obsequious consecration of violence, a grovelling, simpering inauguration of a culture of submissiveness in the face of aggravation – all masquerading as statesman conscience and pietistic justifications such as – Blessed are the Peace-makers. Peace-making? Very well. “But do you select a day on which the survivors gather to reconcile with their losses and gather strength for the future? I challenge all the scriptures of the world to cite one verse where it says that victims must be spiritually and psychologically eviscerated in favour of the cannibalistic urge of their violators in order to arrive at the Nirvana of Peace,” he said. Soyinka said it was inconceivable that Obasanjo could have gone on such a mission without the knowledge of the president, adding that Jonathan owed it a duty to let Nigeria and the world know if his administration sanctioned the Maiduguri visit or not. Besides, he said the president should provide answers to the posers on who initiated the peace talks and who approved it.