Tobias Sylvester
Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka criticized President Bola Tinubu’s recent nationwide address, saying it ignored the violent crackdown on #EndBadGovernance protesters by security forces.
Nigerians took to the streets in major cities to protest against the high cost of living, hunger, and poverty, which they blamed on government policies like the removal of fuel subsidies and the floating of the naira.
Over the past four days, some protesters were killed as the demonstrations turned violent in certain states.
In response, President Tinubu delivered his first nationwide speech since the protests began, calling for calm and insisting that the removal of the subsidy would not be reversed.
However, in a statement on Sunday, Soyinka criticized the President’s approach and the measures taken so far.
Soyinka expressed his disappointment, stating that the address did not adequately address the excessive use of force by security agencies during the protests.
Soyinka argued that security agencies should be aware of more civilized methods of handling protests.
He condemned the use of live bullets and tear gas against peaceful protesters, emphasizing that hunger marches are a universal cry for help, not unique to Nigeria.
Soyinka added that the violent response to these protests is a step back for the nation, drawing parallels to the colonial era’s disregard for citizens, which inspired Hubert Ogunde’s folk opera “Bread and Bullets.”
The statement reads, “HUNGER MARCH As UNIVERSAL MANDATE
“I set my alarm clock for this morning to ensure that I did not miss President Bola Tinubu’s impatiently awaited address to the nation on the current unrest across the nation.
“His outline of government’s remedial action since inception, aimed at warding off just such an outbreak, will undoubtedly receive expert and sustained attention both for effectiveness and in content analysis.
“My primary concern, quite predictably, is the continuing deterioration of the state’s seizure of protest management, an area in which the presidential address fell conspicuously short.
“Such short-changing of civic deserving, regrettably, goes to arm the security forces in the exercise of impunity and condemns the nation to a seemingly unbreakable cycle of resentment and reprisals.
“Live bullets as state response to civic protest – that becomes the core issue. Even tear gas remains questionable in most circumstances, certainly an abuse in situations of clearly peaceful protest.
“Hunger marches constitute a universal S.O.S, not peculiar to the Nigerian nation. They belong indeed in a class of their own, never mind the collateral claims emblazoned on posters.
“They serve as summons to governance that a breaking point has been reached and thus, a testing ground for governance awareness of public desperation.
“The tragic response to the ongoing hunger marches in parts of the nation, and for which notice was served, constitutes a retrogression that takes the nation even further back than the deadly culmination of the watershed ENDSARS protests.
“It evokes pre-independence – that is, colonial – acts of disdain, a passage that induced the late stage pioneer Hubert Ogunde’s folk opera BREAD AND BULLETS, earning that nationalist serial persecution and proscription by the colonial government.
“The nation’s security agencies cannot pretend unawareness of alternative models for emulation, civilized advances in security intervention. Need we recall the nationwide 2022/23 editions of what is generally known as the YELLOW VEST movement in France?
“Perhaps it is time to make such scenarios compulsory viewing in policing curriculum. In all of the coverage that I watched, I did not catch one single instance of a gun leveled at protesters, much less fired at them even during direct physical confrontations.
“The serving of bullets where bread is pleaded is ominous retrogression, and we know what that eventually proves – a prelude to far more desperate upheavals, not excluding revolutions.
“The time is long overdue, surely, to abandon, permanently, the anachronistic resort to lethal means by the security agencies of governance. No nation is so under-developed, materially impoverished, or simply internally insecure as to lack the will to set an example.
“All it takes is to recall its own history, then exercise the will to commence a lasting transformation, inserting a break in the chain of lethal responses against civic society.
“Today’s marchers may wish to consider adopting the key songs of Hubert Ogunde’s BREAD AND BULLETS, if only to inculcate a sense of shame in the continuing failure to transcend the lure of colonial inheritance where we all were at the receiving end. One way or the other, this vicious cycle must be broken.”
KanyiDaily had reported that since the #EndBadGovernance protest started, more than 14 people have been killed across Nigeria.
