You don’t owe Muslims apology over ‘Jaye Lo’ Update |

Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has told Afrobeat musician, David Adeleke, with stage name, Davido, not to apologise to Muslims demanding apology from him over a Update by his signee, Logos Olori, with the title: “Jaye Lo.”

The Nobel laureate made this known in a statement he issued on the Update which has generated several reactions.

Soyinka said: “I have not seen the DAVIDO clip and would greatly appreciate if someone would make it available so we all can debate, objectively, the merits and demerits of positions taken over this recent product of the musician. There are however certain principles, histories, rights and responsibilities of artistic creativity that should not be smothered under emotional manipulation.

“One unavoidably recalls, for instance, scenes from Whoopi Goldberg’s SISTER ACT, followed by a sequel SISTER ACT II: BACK IN THE HABIT. I understand that yet another version, SISTER ACT: The MUSICAL, is under preparation – such appears to be the popularity of the genre. To the best of my recollection, there has been hardly a murmur of offence being taken, not even at the scenes of nuns in their full regalia dancing through the aisles of the chapel and other sacred precincts of the monastery. Centuries of artistic production of this nature, in all disciplines the world over, can be viewed daily at the drop of a coin, even without digging into musty archives.

“Let us learn to distinguish practitioners from their objects of devotion. The former are deserving of respect and understanding, BUT this must be mutual among all believers and non-believers. What we witness these days however is a galloping fever of over-sensitivity over frankly trivial aspects of social co-existence.  I use the word “contrived” deliberately, because I have become convinced that such splurges of “offence taken” are meant to distract us from where the real offence has been, or is being committed often as a routine pattern of overweening entitlement against others. Such encroachments include freedom of belief, association, worship and even the sanctity of life in pursuit of, or repudiation of, existing structures of belief.

“I refer, for the avoidance of doubt, to distractions from the abuse of power as exercised in the virtual proscription of traditional worship – the notorious case of ISESE in Ilorin for instance. There are others, hundreds of others, far too weighty to evoke in relation to this mere piffle of religious sentimentality.