By Boluwatife Ezekiel Olaleye
Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka has stated that President Muhammadu Buhari is 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.”