Benue killings: Soyinka says Buhari acting like Jonathan
Nobel
Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka has stated that President Muhammadu Buhari was
acting like former President, Goodluck Jonathan in his handling of the
activities of Fulani herdsmen across Nigeria.
While
insisting that the President is handling the continued killings of farmers with
kids’-glove, the poet pointed out that Jonathan did same with Boko Haram,
leading to its subsequent escalation.
The
Playwright wondered why the Buhari-led government had not considered some of
the suggestions which stakeholders recommended as a solution to the crisis.
In an
article on Wednesday, titled ‘Impunity rides again through killer herdsmen’,
Soyinka stated that the herdsmen have declared war against Nigeria.
He recalled
that afte,r “a hideous massacre” perpetrated by the herdsmen in 2016, a security
meeting was called and the cattle rearers “attended the meeting — according to
reports — with AK47s and other weapons of mass intimidation visible under their
garments”.
“They were
neither disarmed nor turned back. They freely admitted the killings but
justified them by claims that they had lost their cattle to the host
community,” he said.
“Such are
the monstrous beginnings of the culture of impunity. We are reaping, yet again,
the consequences of such tolerance of the intolerable. Yes, there indeed the
government is culpable, definitely guilty of ‘looking the other way’. Indeed,
it must be held complicit.”
“I am not
aware that IPOB came anywhere close to this homicidal propensity and will to
dominance before it was declared a terrorist organization.
“The
international community rightly refused to go along with such an absurdity. The
conduct of that movement, even at its most extreme, could by no means be
reckoned as terrorism. By contrast, how do we categorize Myeti?”
Reacting to
a statement that herdsmen were in defence of their stolen cows, the nobel
laureate, said, “How do we assess a mental state that cannot distinguish
between a stolen cow – which is always recoverable – and human life, which is
not.
“Villages
have been depopulated far wider than those outside their operational zones can
conceive. They swoop on sleeping settlements, kill and strut. They glory in
their seeming supremacy.”
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