Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole
Soyinka, has lambasted President Muhammadu Buhari for allegedly treating killer
herdsmen with kid gloves.
Soyinka, while speaking at the
Ripples Nigeria Dialogue in Lagos, on Thursday, charged the president to
declare herdsmen terrorists.
“We expect the president to have
the courage to declare such monsters as terrorists and enemies of humanity with
the same dispatch in which he declared the far less violent, albeit, disruptive
IPOB terrorists. We expect a culture of even-handedness”, he said.
“I have always refrained from
labelling the herdsmen as Fulani but since they have publicly come out to admit
they are responsible for the killings, we can say they are Fulani herdsmen.
“An organisation has been
rampaging the nation armed to the teeth and descending on innocent people.
Their spokesman appeared on TV, unrepentant, distorting history, calling on a
state government to rescind their laws and proceeding to defy such laws.
“They went ahead and threatened
continuation of the same acts of degradation. The nation has been placed on the
defensive simply because of the failing of governance.
“Have you ever encountered a more
cynical rendition of the sequence of events when spokesmen of this same
organisation came out to say the killings were taking place because of the laws
which was made to stop the killings in the first place?
“I have not heard that the
leaders of that group have been summoned the way those who do far less things
would have been summoned. Nigeria is not the first country to experience
natural disasters but this is not an excuse to take guns to destabilise other
peace-loving people in their communities.
“While addressing the victims of
the rampage of Fulani herdsmen, the minister of defence asked the victims what
they wanted the herdsmen to do when the grazing routes for their cattle were
being blocked and that minister is still in Buhari’s cabinet.
“I get impatient when I hear
people say that Buhari failed to sympathise with victims in Benue and Taraba.
Who needs presidential sympathy? Is it sympathy that will re-order their broken
lives? We are talking about security of lives and property and bringing
perpetrators to book.
“We expect the government to
respond with massive punitive action when the fundamental security of a people
is violated. We expect the president to immediately show up at the scene of
these disasters and order his troops into action against these arrogant and
blood thirsty people.
“When stung by the criticism that
the president rather chose to attend a wedding in Kano instead of being present
in Dapchi, presidential apologists said the wedding was a needed therapy for
the trauma caused by the abduction of the schoolgirls in Dapchi. That statement
is blasphemous.
“There were so many formula that
would have been adopted to ensure that the couple had their wedding without the
accompanying exhibition of lavishness so soon after a national tragedy. The
nation was in mourning and Buhari would have told the couple that he was not
obliged to be there,” Soyinka said.
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We made big mistake by allowing APC to come to power. That mistake wont repeat itself again.
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