President Muhammadu Buhari is operating under a trance, Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka said yesterday.
The sooner he gets out of that trance, Soyinka said, the better for the country.
Prof. Soyinka, who spoke at a press conference on the damaging consequences of marauding herdsmen on the nation, noted the unforced errors going on in the nation.
With the theme: “Herdsmen and Nation: Valentine Card or Valedictory Rites?”,he lamented that mass destruction of farmlands in the most horrifying manner had become a norm, festering with the encouragement of the government’s body language.
The Nation reports that ?Soyinka described as appalling the position of the Inspector General of Police that the loss of lives in Benue State, and consequent increase in the number of internal refugees, was simply a communual clash.
In his view, little will be achieved in security without state police.
“If the IG can sit in Abuja and say of an event that is happening under the jurisdiction of a governor in another state is just a communal clash when people are being slaughtered and their villages are being occupied, it shows complete alienation. Then there is the authority of Governors who have the ultimate authority for security. It is the governor who is supposed to be the chief security officer. We are now back to authoritative voices saying indeed, state police need to be decentralised. We have been saying it and others have been saying for a long time. We are now getting back to the commonsensical issue that the nation cannot function under a single police command,” he said.
Acknowledging, however, that the Nigerian Army has done marvelously in degrading the capacity of the Boko-Haram insurgents, the poet-activist said
“it must now turn around to face another phenomenon which is considered in some international circles deadlier than the Boko-Haram”.
According to him, the containing efforts happening now should have begun six months as he expected the force to have immediately transferred its concentration from operations, such as Python Dance and Crocodile Smile to where the heat was.
He said the security agencies have the responsibility to look at highly-placed people in whose interest anarchy can be fostered.
Soyinka added:
“Why colonies were brought in to complicate things, I do not know. Ranches; that’s the word used everywhere. There is no organized illegal force that does not sooner or later spin up. Are these internally generated or are they being launhed by individuals who in their interest the nation must be in a state of anarchy? We sometimes talk about corruption but we don’t understand how far corruption goes. When you think of the amount being stolen in this country, enough funds illegal fund to destabilise the country. We might end up discovering that some of these people profit from ensuring there is chaos from Maiduguri to Lagos.”
Emeh Achanga,the CEO of the Miss Petite Nigeria Brand is a lawyer turned blogger. She is very passionate about writing, with several publications and awards to her credit .She is currently working on publishing a collection of short stories which are basically a memoir about her exciting true experiences.
