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Home Editorial

Soyinka’s warning on Nigeria’s suicidal slide

25th June 2021
in Editorial
1
Nigeria edging towards collapse –Soyinka
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The recent warning by Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, that Nigeria might not celebrate another Democracy Day as one nation is very timely. Soyinka, who spoke in an interview with Arise Television, urged President Muhammadu Buhari to stop exuding false confidence and listen to his citizens’ clamour for decentralisation and restructuring.

According to Soyinka, “If a nation is on a suicide slide, the people who feel that they do not deserve that kind of suicidal plunge have a right to say they are getting off this plane before it nosedives.”

Coming on the heels of the demonstrations that trailed the Democracy Day on June 12, and the continuous agitation for restructuring by the majority of Nigerians, the Federal Government should take Soyinka’s warning seriously. What the Nobel Laureate said is an amplification of what many prominent Nigerians have said over the years. In 2019, Soyinka together with the former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Chief Emeka Anyaoku; former Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Theophilus Danjuma (retd); and former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan were among the prominent Nigerians who cautioned that Nigeria was drifting and heading towards anarchy.           

In July 2017, some Christian elders comprising such personalities as former Lt. Gen. Danjuma (retd), and retired Generals Zamani Lekwot and the late Joshua Dogonyaro warned that Nigeria was drifting dangerously towards another war. Socio-cultural groups such as Afenifere, Ohanaeze Ndigbo, Pan-Niger Delta Forum (PANDEF) and many others have said similar things. Simply put, the majority of Nigerians want fiscal federalism, devolution of powers, state police, among others.

Currently, we are operating a system that was at the behest of the colonial masters. Even the constitution we are operating now is a military creation purported to have been enacted by the people of Nigeria. Today, there is serious tension in most parts of the country. In the North, bandits have made life unbearable for the citizens. Kidnap of schoolchildren and travellers for ransom has become a lucrative business. In the South East, security agents are the target of unknown gunmen who often kill them and set their stations and operational vehicles ablaze. This has led to the harassment and sometimes, killing of innocent youths under the guise of hunting for the members of the Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB).

In the South West, there have been occasional clashes between Fulani herdsmen and the natives. Agitations for self-determination have increased both in the South East and South West even as North Central and the Niger Delta regions have their own grievances. A Yoruba activist, Mr. Sunday Adeyemo, also known as Sunday Igboho, has given the Fulani ultimatum to quit Yoruba land.

We seem not to have learnt any lesson from the 30-month civil war that cost the country millions of lives. It is worthy to note that in the 2019 Fragile States Index, the Washington-based Fund For Peace ranked Nigeria as the 14th most unstable country in the world out of 178 countries assessed.

The major cause of the current tension in the country can be traced to the activities of killer herdsmen. This is why southern governors banned open grazing in their region. Rather than support it, the Federal Government has been making statements indicating support for open grazing. The most worrying thing is that the more people agitate for restructuring, the more the Presidency feels adamant to fulfill the wishes of the people. In responding to calls for restructuring by people like Pastor Enoch Adeboye last year, the Presidency through the Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media and Publicity, Garba Shehu, said government would not succumb to threats or take a decision out of pressure. It described such calls as unwarranted and unpatriotic. 

Yugoslavian leaders similarly blocked their ears to the agitations from the constituent units in the country. By 1992, there was no stopping the splitting of the country into seven independent states. Czechoslovakia suffered the same fate. The country ignored early signs of a break-up and did not act swiftly until the wave of disintegration swept the country away.  It broke into two, Slovakia and Czech Republic, in 1993. Even Soviet Union was a once powerful nation. Today, it is fragmented into different countries.

It is important that our leaders should listen to the voices of reason. It is worth recalling that the Department of State Services (DSS) warned twice this year that certain non-state actors were bent on exploiting the country’s fault lines to cause ethno-religious conflict in some parts of Nigeria.

We need to act fast before things degenerate further. To start with, our borders must be adequately protected to prevent the influx of foreign criminal herdsmen into the country. Let us emulate Bolivia which, in 2008, wrote a new constitution recognising itself as a multi-ethnic country. It also prescribed clauses to protect culture, lands and indigenous languages. Also, Switzerland, with four ethno-linguistic groups, agreed to a rotational presidency among the seven-member federal council.

This is the time to negotiate Nigeria’s unity and prevent the looming suicidal slide.

Tags: professor wole soyinkaSoyinka’s warning on Nigeria’s suicidal slidethat Nigeria might not celebrate another DemocracyThe recent warning by Nobel Laureate
Rapheal

Rapheal

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Comments 1

  1. Dr Uche Kalu says:
    2 years ago

    Isn’t it about time our Indigenous Leaders,especially those of the South
    and Middle Belt Forum (SMBLF ) did rally round and nip the current suicide
    slide of the country right in the bud before it is too late?
    Since that semi-illiterate Jihadist prone Islamic chauvinist and irredentist,
    Mallam Muhammadu Buhari was imposed upon us as our President in 2015,
    he has single handedly plunged our fatherland into our current Hobbessian
    State of Nature.
    Buhari is solely responsible for what has become of our country today.
    Our Leaders of SMBLF must match their daily hackneyed dolorous
    tirades or rather jeremaids and denunciatory complaints about the
    abysmal and calamitious state of our country with some punitive actions.
    President Buhari must either be compelled to thrown in his towel and hand
    over power to his deputy or be hounded out of office by force, because he is
    neither academically qualified nor morally fit to lead a multi-cultural, a
    multi-ethnic and a multi-religious country of nations like ours.
    If he refuses to resign,he should be dragged before the ICC at the Hague in
    the Netherland becauses of his following crimes against humanity:
    1.Incipient genocide by his Fulani Killer Herdsmen on their Futahat
    Campaign of daily pogroms and ethnic cleansings of native Nigerians
    from their ancestral land, in a bid to Fulanize and Islamize our Kwa/Bantu
    Fatherland and to make Nigeria an Usman Dan Fodio Estate of the Fulanis.
    President Buhari is the current Grand Patron of MACBAN and the Fulani
    Killer Herdsmen.
    The ongoing Futahat Campign by the Fulani Killer Herdsmen is exactly
    what Buhari as a Chairman of MACBAN in the 1990s did promise the
    late Governor of Oyo State,Dr Lam Adesina.
    2. President Buhari did order a siege on the South East and at his behest,
    Nigerian Armed Forces and the Police solely commanded and dominated
    by Jihadist prone muslims must shoot-at-sight , on our flag-bearing ,
    non-violent and unarmed Millennials of IPOB.
    There is indeed an ongoing incipient genocide in Igboland gainst our
    innocent Igbo children.
    President Buhari’s recent threat to teach our Igbo Children the lessons
    he and his fellow Nigerian Vandal Soldiers taught their parents during the
    Biafran – Nigerian War of 1967 -1970, is enough to drag him to the ICC,
    because that is exactly what is going on today in the South East.
    During the Biafran-Nigerian War of Genocide against us Biafrans,
    Commander Muhammadu Buhari and his Second Brigade Unit of the
    Ist Nigerian Army Division,did commit the worst war crimes and crimes
    against humanity in Afikpo North and South of Ebonyi State today.
    They did leave behind them some spectaculum of horrors and massacres
    of innocent people of Afikpo quite reminiscent of Hollyoods Classics of Spartacus the Thracian Gladiator acted by Kirk Douglas.
    Mallam Muhammadu Buhari must not be allowed to go scot free this
    time round.
    ”Ndigbo unu na anukwa?’
    Kpum bu ogu.Ofo!
    Ndigbo ga agwazinu ochu.Iwu!”
    All Hail Biafra our God’s Own Land of the Rising Sun!!

    Reply

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