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.
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.
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.”
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