Politics

Nigeria: Our pilot has gone missing, says Soyinka

Published

7 years ago

April 30, 2018

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Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka has likened Nigeria to a plane whose pilot has gone missing, adding that the plane could crash if efforts are not made to regain control of the plane which has since been on auto-pilot.

In a statement titled ‘MAYDAY! MAYDAY!! MAYDAY!!!’, the scholar likened the security situation in the country to that of the Aeroflot Flight 593 of September 28, 1994 where all passengers died because the pilot left the cockpit to the mercy of his family members while he went to salute the passengers.

Soyinka said he mentioned the date thrice as a distress call to the continuous killings in various parts of the country.

“There are certain eerie parallels in the Nigerian present to a certain MayDay disorder, one in which that distress call was never heard. Aeroflot Flight 593 of Sept. 28, 1994 was such an event, a flight in which all occupants of that plane perished,” Soyinka said.

Still making allusion to the aircraft, Soyinka said many organisations have been calling on the “Nigerian captain” to make the distress call but there has been “no sign of willing”.

He, therefore, advised President Muhammadu Buhari to take drastic steps in quelling the killings which he described as “ethnic cleansing,” saying Nigeria cannot remain on auto-pilot as hitherto, while the pilot strolls up and down the aisle, assuring passengers that all is well.

“The plain expression is ethnic cleansing “and we must not beat around the bush. The shade of Rwanda hangs over the nation,” he said.

“Issue orders to the military and police that, wherever illegal occupiers are found, they should be meted the same treatment as are accorded terrorists. Instruct all agencies that, once cleared of usurpers, the rightful occupants should be escorted back to their farmsteads and villages and provided maximum protection.

“We must go beyond arresting a token handful of herders caught with arms – there are still hundreds of them in the forests. It is not enough to back the anti- open grazing laws, so late in the day, but we shall leave that for later.

“All available forces should be deployed to right a hideous, unprecedented wrong that has left the nation drowning in blood – we simply cannot continue one day longer to endure this forceful feeding of human blood.”