{"word_count": 180, "character_count": 1253}
Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, is teaming up with a number of academics in the culture sector to halt the transfer of the archives of Ulli and Georgina Beier from Osogbo, Osun State, to the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, Abeokuta, Ogun State.The process of securing the transfer of the cultural museum, Soyinka contended, was “devious, fraudulent, manipulative and a grand deception.”Soyinka, who spoke at a press conference in Abeokuta on Thursday, said since the archives were procured with public funds, they could not be transferred to a private enterprise.He explained that though he and his colleagues in the acedemia had written to the Director-General of the United Nations Educational and Scientific Organisation on the illegality of the exercise, they had also concluded arrangements to challenge the transfer in a court of competent jurisdiction.Soyinka asked that the “manipulated MoU” submitted to UNESCO be withdrawn and represented in a proper manner.The Osun State Government, which acquired the museum, had recently announced the transfer of the archives, under the auspices of the Institute of Black Culture and International Understanding, to the OOPL. [...]http://www.punchng.com/Articl.aspx?theartic=Art200808151491270