Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka has condemned the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) for banning Eedris Abdulkareem’s latest protest song, “Tell Your Papa,” describing the move as a dangerous return to censorship and an attack on freedom of expression.
In a statement issued from New York University, Abu Dhabi, Soyinka said the action mirrored past attempts to suppress critical voices in Nigeria’s cultural space. “Courtesy of an artist operating in a different genre – the cartoon – who sent me his recent graphic comment on the event, I learnt recently of a return to the culture of censorship with the banning of the product of a music artist, Eedris Abdulkareem,” he said.
With heavy irony, Soyinka mocked the NBC’s decision, saying it did not go far enough. “It is not only the allegedly offensive record that should be banned – the musician himself should be proscribed. Next, PMAN, or whatever musical association of which Abdulkareem is member, should also go under the hammer,” he wrote. He also mentioned the cartoonist, Ebun Aleshinloye, who illustrated a satire of the ban and sent it to him in Abu Dhabi. “Let’s simply go the whole hog!”
Although he admitted he hadn’t listened to the song, Soyinka stressed that the principle of free expression remains sacred in any democracy. “This is why I feel that we should look on the bright side… The ban is a boost to the artist’s nest egg, thanks to free governmental promotion. Mr. Abdulkareem must be currently warbling his merry way all the way to the bank. I envy him.”
He warned that Nigeria had witnessed similar cycles of censorship in the past, and such actions only embolden repressive behavior. “We have been through this before, over and over again, ad nauseam… It is boring, time-wasting, diversionary but most essential of all, subversive of all seizure of the fundamental right of free expression.”
Soyinka also drew a link between government censorship and broader societal violence, referencing the recent mob killing of 19 people in Edo State. He compared it to the 2022 murder of Deborah Samuel in Sokoto, whose killers he noted were never brought to justice. “As long as the culture of impunity is given the sheerest strain of legitimacy… a reversion to brutish existence becomes a nation’s stamp of identity,” he warned.
Calling for accountability, he said: “The culprits are in plain sight and so are witnesses. There can be no excuses.”
