Wole Soyinka in an address
to the National Conference on Culture and Tourism on Wednesday said he was
shocked by the President’s claim that the attacks would soon be over.
The Nobel laureate, Prof.
Wole Soyinka, has criticized President Muhammadu Buhari for his reaction to
increasing attacks and killings by herdsmen in several states in the country.
He added that comments made
by the President and the government fell short of expectation and did not
provide any reassurance for Nigerians.
He said, “When I read a
short while ago, the Presidential assurance to this nation that the current
homicidal escalation between the cattle prowlers and farming communities would
soon be over, I felt mortified.
“He had the solution, he
said. Cattle ranches were being set up, and in another 18 months, rustlings,
destruction of livelihood and killings from herdsmen would be ‘a thing of the
past’. Eighteen months, he assured the nation. I believe his Minister of
Agriculture echoed that later, but with a less dispiriting time schema.
“Neither, however, could be
considered a message of solace and reassurance for the ordinary Nigerian farmer
and the lengthening cast of victims, much less to an intending tourist to the
Forest Retreat of Tinana in the Rivers, the Ikogosi Springs or the Moslem
architectural heritage of the ancient city of Kano. In any case, the external
tourists have less hazardous options.”
The Nobel laureate, who
said the signs were already clear and the rampage of impunity was already
manifesting a cultic intensity of alarming proportions almost a year ago, noted
that the current violence and killings by the herdsmen would among other things
hurt tourism in the country.
Despite the warning signs,
he said the government failed to react with his attempt to utilise the Open
Forum platform of the Centre for Culture and International Understanding,
Oshogbo, to launch a national debate on the topic – ‘Sacred cows or sacred rights’ almost a
year ago also failing to take place.
The plan had been to invite
Buhari to give a keynote address at the event.
The failure to react to the
warning signs allowed the situation to degenerate beyond arbitrary violence,
according to Soyinka.
He said, “It is not merely
arbitrary violence that reigns across the nation but total, undisputed
impunity. Impunity evolves and becomes integrated in conduct when crime occurs
and no legal, logical and moral response is offered. I have yet to hear this
government articulate a firm policy of non-tolerance for the serial massacres
have become the nation’s identification stamp.
“I have not heard an order
given that any cattle herders caught with sophisticated firearms be instantly
disarmed, arrested, placed on trial, and his cattle confiscated.
“The nation is treated to
an eighteen-month optimistic plan which, to make matters worse, smacks of
abject appeasement and encouragement of violence on innocents.
“Let me repeat, and of
course I only ask to be corrected if wrong: I have yet to encounter a terse,
rigorous, soldierly and uncompromising language from this leadership, one that
threatens a response to this unconscionable blood-letting that would make even
Boko Haram repudiate its founding clerics.”
Soyinka, who said herdsmen
were perhaps humanity’s earliest known tourists, said they must be thought
about the culture of settlement and “learn to seek accommodation with settled
hosts wherever encountered”.
“The leadership of any
society cannot stand idly and offer solutions that implicitly deem the
massacres of innocents mere incidents on the way to that learning school,” he
warned.
“For every crime, there is
a punishment, for every violation, there must be restitution. The nomads of the
world cannot place themselves above the law of settled humanity.”
No comments:
Post a Comment