Nigerian Nobel Winner Arrested

Police fired tear gas and arrested dozens, including Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, during an anti-government protest Saturday in Nigeria’s commercial capital.

Soyinka, an outspoken opponent of previous military regimes, is also a vocal critic of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s civilian government, describing Nigeria as an anarchic state in which normal government functions have been upended.

The writer was among 500 demonstrators at a protest in central Lagos organized by human rights groups and other organizations calling for the government’s resignation. Some of the demonstrators waved signs reading “Obasanjo is a civilian dictator.”

After 15 minutes, police officers fired tear gas to break up the demonstration and arrested dozens of people, including Soyinka, and bundling them into police vans.

“We were very deliberately tear-gassed,” Soyinka said by telephone after his release from police custody. He described the police action as a “mindless and unproductive attack.”

Soyinka, 69, won the 1986 Nobel Prize in literature for his autobiographical books, poems and plays depicting the brutality and chaos of life under military rule. He fled Nigeria’s then-ruling military in 1994 and lives in Atlanta, where he teaches at Emory University.

Soyinka was released without charge after being detained for an hour, police Assistant Superintendent Yinka Adeleke said. Police also released an unknown number of other activists from a Lagos station.

Soyinka said he and others planned further demonstrations to press sweeping demands, including election reforms and a new constitution.

Authorities this month announced a ban on public demonstrations after a reported “breach of security” that some army officials termed a plot to overthrow Obasanjo, a retired general whose election in 1999 ended 15 years of military rule.

Obasanjo won reelection in April 2003 in an election that his opponent, former military leader Muhammadu Buhari, said was rigged.