By PRISCA SAM-DURU & ELIZABETH UWANDU

THE battle to save the life of Palestinian poet and visual artist, Ashraf Fayadh who has been sentenced to death by the  Saudi Arabian government for renouncing Islam and for allegedly posting an online video showing women being flogged by Saudi Arabia authorities, continued last Thursday with Nigeria’s literary community led by Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, joining the global community to demand for his unconditional release.

• Ashraf Fayadh must be freed: Nobel laureate Prof Soyinka (m) leading other literay icons during the march

At an event tagged;  ‘Free Ashraf Fayadh Now’ organised by AJ House of Poets, held at old prison yard now Freedom Park, Lagos, writers, poets and literary enthusiasts joined guests of honour, Prof Soyinka, Kunle Ajibade, in readings, conversation and performances to call on governments all over the world to intervene and save Ashraf from execution.

The programme kicked-off with a protest march which had participants, marching round the old prison yard and according to writer and poet, AJ Dagga Tola, symbolically represented freedom for the condemned poet. Ashraf’s posters were conspicuously displayed with inscriptions such as, The Poet they hated and sentenced to death must not die, free Ashraf Fayadh now!etc. They also chanted solidarity songs for freedom.

The reading session featured a performance of Ashraf’s existing works, such as Equal Opportunities, An Aphorism, Conclusions, Logic etc. Dagga Tola read a poem he wrote for the condemned Poet titled The Laments of Trees, Prof Soyinka read his poem, ‘Anthem to Humanism’, Executive Director, TheNews,  Mr Kunle Ajibade read from his prison memoir, Jailed for Life, which he wrote from his experience during incarceration by Sani Abacha. There were also spoken word performances. Stage performances featuring Aduke took place later at the open air theatre. Earlier in his opening remarks, Prof Soyinka decried what he termed religious bogotry.

According to him, “Religion is an act of faith, I want to make this declaration here, all of us here should make up our minds about the role of religion in our society. Religion is a personal affirmation …even among school children there is no inferior or superior among them, so, equal opportunity should be given to either male or female. We do not subscribe to any article of faith that places one superior to the other. We have been beating about the bush far too long, that we neglect our own belief and this is what created the extremism of Boko Haram.”

The literary icon who condemned any religious practice that sentences people to death for espousing their faith also noted that, “We are not doing Ashraf Fayadh a favour by this protest. We are doing ourselves a favour. We are saying religion is a personal thing. No culture or religion should place one gender superior to another. “All human beings are created equal. Like Martin Lurther King said that we should be judged not by the colour of our skin or gender or anatomy, but by our conduct or what we do.

“We have allowed scripture texts like Bible, Koran and other religious books to take symbolic and active control of our thoughts… We have not looked deeply to why one half of the world would impose their religion on the other half of the world. Why should a bunch of mortals sit down and sentence someone to death , what kind of arrogance is that?Why should extremists impose their belief on others?

“We do not deserve to be sentenced to death, harassed or imprisoned for practising a different faith.  Stop using religion as an excuse because if you use it, you are bringing it into public domain and it would become an object for discussion,” he intoned.