By Okey Ndiribe, Dapo Akinrefon & James Ezema

LAGOS—NOBEL Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, yesterday, asked the Inspector-General of Police to revoke the regulation compelling Nigerians to produce police reports before they could be treated in an emergency.

Soyinka who was addressing a rally to mark the fifth anniversary of the death of founding secretary of Campaign for Democracy, CD, in Lagos, Comrade Chima Ubani, argued that the law was anti-human and irrelevant.

The rally took place in Lagos with the Theme: Chima Ubani: Five years after; Democracy and Development: The missing link.

It will be recalled that Ubani, aged 42, died in a fatal motor accident on September 21, 2005 on his way from Maiduguri after a mass rally organized by a coalition of Organized Labour and Civil Society groups against increases in petroleum product prices.

Until his death, Ubani, was a leader of the pro-democracy movement in Nigeria and a former Amnesty International prisoner of conscience. He was the Executive Director of Civil Liberties Organization, CLO, between 2003 and 2005.

Soyinka said the late Ubani could have been alive if the various hospitals he was taken to after the accident had treated him immediately instead of insisting on Police reports.

He said: “So, one of the things we can remember and establish against the present norm and remember and honour Ubani for, is to call on the Inspector-General of Police and insist, not next week, not next month, not next year but even today, that this stupid, thoughtless kind of regulation be revoked because it is anti-human.”

The Nobel laureate, however, assured that the fundamental issues that Ubani died for has not been relegated to the background, adding: “These profound issues may have been temporarily overshadowed but they would be pursued to the letter.

“Now, back to my message, and the thrust of this message was a funeral that happened just about a few days ago. The deceased worked not too far from here. And why did he die? A careless driver mowed him down with about five other people. This individual would have been with us today if the stupid, anti-human regulations that govern the conduct of those who are supposed to protect our security were not in force. Maybe Chima also would have been alive today if those rules were not being enforced.

“And what happened was a good Samaritan, as the expression goes, picked up this man who was still breathing, injured, still save-able and he went to, I repeat, eight hospitals. They went from one hospital to the other and these clinics would not admit this patient unless he had a police report.

Look, I don’t know in what kind of society this kind of barbarism is allowed to happen; that a patient, a seriously injured individual, a citizen like ourselves, like any of you, will be taken from one clinic to the other, bleeding, and rejected because there is a regulation. I’m not even aware that there is even a law; I think it’s just a regulation that you must bring a police report.

Soyinka on gates of Paradise

“Well, I don’t know if you would need police report to the gates of Paradise, but if you do, I hope it won’t be from our policemen because I know all of us here would be rejected. I mean, I’m not going there anyway; I have no intention of going there. It’s more fun on the other side. But for those of you that are going there, if the gates are guarded by the Nigeria Police, Angel Gabriel or whoever will turn you back and say go and say go and bring police report. So, it’s a ridiculous society, which we live in and one of thing is, we owe many, many things to memory.”

Human rights lawyer and convener of United Action for Democracy, UAD, Mr. Bamidele Aturu, said that time has come for all progressives and civil society groups in Nigeria to come together under one umbrella to fight to save the nation.

Aturu who called on Nigerians to resist attempts by the government to sell the nation’s public institutions added: “It is wrong to sell public institutions because doing so would make life unbearable for the people.”

President of the Campaign for Democracy, CD, Dr. Joe Okei-Odumakin, said the 2011 elections would be the last opportunity Nigerians had to decide how they would be led. She said: “We must all struggle to ensure that we vote out those whose pedigres have impacted negatively on the nation’s democracy.”