NOBEL laureate, Wole Soyinka on Monday warned governors and members of the National Assembly to watch against any attempt by the Federal Government to usurp their powers.
Soyinka questioned President Muhammadu Buhari’s power to impose a 14-day curfew on Lagos, Ogun and Abuja, in a bid to contain the Coronavirus pandemic.
He invited states and the lawmakers to determine whether the president acted in accordance with the law.
The playwright, who on Monday completed his 14-day self-isolation after returning from the United States, stated this in a statement ‘Between covid and constitutional encroachment’.
The shutdown, which will be for an initial two weeks, “is the containment period to identify, trace and isolate all individuals that have come into contact with confirmed cases,” Buhari said on Sunday night.
Soyinka said: “Constitutional lawyers and our elected representatives should kindly step into this and educate us, mere lay minds. The worst development I can conceive is to have a situation where rational measures for the containment of the Corona pandemic are rejected on account of their questionable genesis. This is a time for Unity of Purpose, not nitpicking dissensions.
