Nobel laureate attacks Nigeria's Obasango

Lagos - Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka launched a vitriolic attack on Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo on Saturday over the murder of a former minister, denouncing the country's ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) as "a nest of killers".

The 1986 winner of the Nobel prize for Literature, an outspoken critic of Obasanjo's handling of the December 2001 killing of justice minister Bola Ige, fired the salvo in a letter to the president published on Saturday.

"There is a nest of killers within the PDP. It is evident that the vipers in that nest do not strike only outwards but inwards," the playwright said in the letter published in leading Nigerian newspapers.

Two of the 11 suspects on trial for Ige's murder - Iyiola Omisore and Olawale Oladipo - are Obasanjo's political allies. All 11 have pleaded not guilty.

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As a native of Nigeria and born in the same town as Wole Soyinka and Obasanjo, I am actually pleased to see two "sons of the soil" (in Nigerian parlance) play a prominent role in Nigerian politics. However, I think Soyinka ought to temper his criticisms of Obasanjo with the realization that Nigeria is a complex and difficult country to govern. Much damage was done to Nigeria by past administrations. It will take patience and dedication to steer the country back on the correct course.

that put Nigeria in its present predicament? When will it be "ok" to say what needs to be said about the mis-administration of the country without some people finding some excuses for the nonsense that goes on in Nigeria?

Asia, SE Asia. (The U.S.'s great Democratic allys.) It doesn't matter if they have elections or not; Africa, SE Asia, South America... they all do the same thing. The citizens are powerless. The Elite leaders use their families and friends to amass(steal) wealth from the country/people. The citizens are only needed to perform the remedial tasks which gather wealth for the Power Elite. That's what overseas democracy is. When these elected cronies get too old, the system is passed to their children and the cycle of sin begins again.