Nobel Laureate, Prof Wole
Soyinka, has warned the Federal Government against the proposed establishment
of Ruga settlements across the country for herdsmen.
He warned that the move, if not
checked will set the country on fire.
Speaking in Lagos on Tuesday at
the launch of United Nations’ Solutions 17 SDG programme, Soyinka berated the
federal government for the idea, which will said can cause Nigeria to explode.
According to him: “Ruga is going
to be an explosion if not handled with care. But why do we not take our
policies from good models? This is not the way people and countries deal with
issues of cattle.
“I travel everywhere. It has to
be handled in a way that is logical, comprehensible to the environment. When a
cattle walks up to the window of my house in Abeokuta, a house which is located
in a residential area, then there’s a problem.
“When cattle goes to Ijebu Ode
and eat up their plant seedlings and so on and you expect people to be quiet?”
He stated the handling of the
herdsmen issue by President Muhammadu Buhari was enough to make him lose
re-election.
“President Buhari deserved to
have lost the last election for the lackadaisical attitude he took to the issue
of cattle rearing in the country.
“People have been killed in
hundreds just because of the failure of leadership at a critical time. And the
cattle herders have been given a sense of impunity. They kill without any
compunction, they drive away the farmers who have been contributing to the food
solutions in the country, the cattle eat their crops and then you come up with
Ruga.
“I think that there is going to
be trouble in this country if this Ruga thing is not handled imaginatively and
with humanity as priority. Any country where cattle takes priority over human
life is definitely at an elementary stage,” he maintained.
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