Soyinka hits Buhari, says it’s an embarrassment to have a president who refuses to obey court decisions

Wole Soyinka

By OBINNA EZUGWU

Nobel Laureate Professor Wole Soyinka has described as “embarrassing” the inability of the President Muhammadu Buhari led government to obey court orders, noting that it was an invitation to chaos.

Soyinka stated this while presenting his keynote speech at an event tagged ‘Handshake Across Nigeria: Towards A Productive Nigeria’ organised by Igbo think tank groups, Nzuko Umunna and Aka Ikenga, held at Muson Centre, Onikan Lagos on Monday.

The Nobel Prize winner decried the elusive peace in Nigeria, noting that religious and ethnic tensions have continue to escalate, but said that there were signs of hope, even as he commended the organisers of the event for the initiative.

“There is good news in the midst of the gloom,” he said. “Only recently, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) met President Buhari and demanded yet again for the release of a religious leader, (Sheikh Ibrahim) El-Zakzaky as well as the former National Security Adviser, Sambo Dasuki.

“They stretched their hands across the borders of religion and ethnic region and said to the president, obey the courts, release these people irrespective of their religious inclinations, irrespective of what part of the country they came from. They reminded the president once again that he is the first citizen of the nation – emphasis on the citizen – and a citizen cannot choose which laws to obey and which to ignore because that’s the beginning of chaos.

“We just had the 70th anniversary of the declaration of human rights. Actually, it’s an embarrassment to have a president who refuses to obey the decisions of the court.”

Speaking on the theme of the occasion, ‘Nigeria Beyond Oil,” Soyinka said it was a productive handshake as it was aimed at advancing solutions to Nigeria’s challenges.

“Nigeria beyond oil, yours is a productive handshake, material handshake across Nigeria. I come from Ogun State for instance, where we have seen collaboration between my state and Plateau State which resulted in the production of rice.

“It is a green handshake across the nation and the concentration is on the basic fundamental concern of humanity for his very survival, food. And in this case, rice. This is also a very useful symbol in this sense, because the physical context reminds of when this nation used to be famous for the groundnuts pyramid.”

He however, lamented that the incessant killing by herdsmen has prevented the advancement of this handshake, as according to him, the herders step in before the fruit of the handshake is harvested to kill farmers and destroy farms while the government looks on.

“But lo and behold, what happens before the productive handshake produce their reward? Or even before the time of harvest begins; what happens? Alarm comes in the name of nomadic herdsmen,” he said.

“They take over, burn the crops, slaughter the farmers and take over their dwellings. And this is a nation which is nearly a century old from independence at least, because nations have always been here. Let’s not forget that.

“What is horrifying is not just the lackadaisical attitude (of government), but the attempt to justify the impossible.

“We have a minister of defence who says to the farmers, the berieved farmers; the survivors that, what else do you expect if you block the roads of cattle? What else do you want them to do? Unspoken answer is of course, pick up your AK47 and mow down the producers. And this goes on for so long.

“And you wonder, is it really possible to have a reward of your labour? And here we come to the critical question, what do you want to sow to one’s life, what do you want to sow for the future?”

He regretted that politicians manipulate religion to cause crisis and promote backwardness and argued that restructuring had become inevitable so that people can decide what they want to so sow and reap consequently without having to bug others down.

“I recall that in the past, there was a governor in Akwa Ibom who decided that his mission was to change the perception of the people of the state as house boys or domestic servants, and he set out to do it. I also remember that at that same period, a governor in Zamfara decided to promote Sharia and today we can see the result in Zamfara.”

He argued that the government has no right to refuse to heed the calls for restructuring as it cannot decide for the people what they want.

“When people talk of restructuring, whether physical restructuring, decentralisation, reconfiguration – call it whatever you want, when people say that something is not functioning, that there is something rotten in the state of Nigeria, and it is very possible that the relationship from part to the whole or from part to part may be as a result of this, it is worth listening to. You have no right as government to say no, you cannot do it,” he said.

“It is not a new cry, it has gone on for years. And the cry is dismissed by those who govern because they are totally alienated from the people they are supposed to govern. I remember that I participated in previous exercise, there was one even more recent, the exercise that was inaugurated by President Jonathan.

“Before that it was PRONACO. And some of us that came to it early, yes, not from the beginning, but we came into it and said to the government that existed at the time that for Nigeria to come together, we must provide a framework for enhanced continuity, and they said we committed treason.

“The inspector General of Police then even got up and said, that meeting will not take place and that it is treasonable and the participants will be arrested. This is why some of us decided to form PRONACO to say that Nigerians are free human beings, we can meet and move forward.”