Lagos - Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka launched a vitriolic attack on Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo on Saturday over the murder of a former minister, denouncing the country's ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) as "a nest of killers".
The 1986 winner of the Nobel prize for Literature, an outspoken critic of Obasanjo's handling of the December 2001 killing of justice minister Bola Ige, fired the salvo in a letter to the president published on Saturday.
"There is a nest of killers within the PDP. It is evident that the vipers in that nest do not strike only outwards but inwards," the playwright said in the letter published in leading Nigerian newspapers.
Two of the 11 suspects on trial for Ige's murder - Iyiola Omisore and Olawale Oladipo - are Obasanjo's political allies. All 11 have pleaded not guilty.
Soyinka told reporters on Friday he was forced to publish the letter after Obasanjo leaked a reply to the press accusing the literary icon of peddling falsehoods on Ige's death.
"Rambo on the loose, so overabundantly manifested in your intemperate, irrational and totally unwarranted letter," Soyinka said in the letter, referring to Obasanjo's leaked reply.
Ige was the most senior Nigerian government official slain in office in more than two decades.
The trial of the suspected killers of Ige, shot dead in his home in the city of Ibadan, north of the commercial hub of Lagos, has been dogged by controversy including the dramatic withdrawal of three judges assigned the case.
The third trial judge withdrew this week, citing "pressure from unexpected quarters" and threats to his life.
Obasanjo nominated Oladipo for a ministerial job after his re-election for a second term in hotly disputed April polls. The president dropped him following widespread public outcry.
Earlier, the PDP sparked outrage when it nominated Omisore to run for senate from his prison cell. A former southwest Osun state deputy governor, Omisore won the seat and was released on bail in June to attend the swearing-in ceremony.
Omisore and Ige, both members of the southwest-based AD party, were locked in a power struggle. Omisore joined PDP after the murder when the regional assembly impeached him on charges of corruption and anti-party activities.
Political violence has claimed more than 10 000 lives in Nigeria since military rule ended in 1999.