Written by David Ugbabe
Nobel laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka yesterday, in an interview with Arise News, which focused on June 12 Democracy Day commemoration in Nigeria described the country as a plane that is on a suicide slide, and that the citizens have the right to exit the plane before it nosedives.
Soyinka warned that Nigeria may not celebrate another Democracy Day as one nation if President Muhammadu Buhari fails to listen to the people and decentralize the system of government. “And that is what’s happening to people in the streets. That’s why they are moving, that’s why they are demonstrating; that’s why they are defying even threats from the police and the government – If you demonstrate, we will do this, if you do this, we will deal with you, we will talk to you in language which you understand – it does not wash with anybody any longer. Because 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,” he said.
Asked what his thoughts are on Nigerian continuing as one, the Nobel Laureate said: “Not if it continues this way. Not if it fails to decentralize. If Nigeria fails to decentralize, and I mean to decentralize as fast as possible, manifestly and not as rhetoric, then Nigeria cannot stay together.
“Again, it is not Wole Soyinka saying this. Everybody has said it: ex-heads of state have said it; politicians have said it; analysts have said it; economists have said it, and sometimes we get tired.
“I am saying this whole nation is about to self-destruct and I am not the only one saying it, except Buhari and his government listen and take action, we would not celebrate another Democracy Day come next year.
Citing the position of the Southern governors on open grazing Soyinka said at least 50 per cent of a nation are saying that within this democratic dispensation we are operating, we are saying on behalf of our people, we do not want open grazing anymore and then somebody sits in Aso Rock and says to them, I am instructing my Attorney-General to dig up some kind of colonial law, which arbitrated between farmers and herders.
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“This means that he is not listening to what the people are saying, he is not listening to what the government representing them is saying. When I listen to things like that, I really despair. His last interview was instructive, not that there was anything new in it,
He noted that the upsurge in secessionist agitation in the country in recent times stemmed from Buhari’s refusal to listen to Nigerians. Therefore, he urged President Buhari to stop exuding false confidence and speak like a leader who is ready to take action concerning the country’s challenges.
Commenting on the recent ban on Twitter in Nigeria, Soyinka observed that truncating the various channels of self-expression open to any polity amounted to absolutely abrogating the very essence of democracy.
“When you truncate any channel of self-expression of a people, you are literally becoming an enemy of democracy. It is so obvious and plain that I don’t even understand why one has to expatiate on it,” he said.
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