Wole Soyinka, Nobel laureate, has criticised President Bola Tinubu Sunday broadcast for failing to address security agencies use of lethal force to quell #EndHunger protests across Nigeria which began last Thursday.
Soyinka, 90, a close ally of President Tinubu, said the refusal of the President to address matter in his speech was an endorsement and empowering the security agencies to continue toeing the pact of impunity.
Police and SSS operatives fired live ammunition at journalists hanging around the Moshood Abiola National Stadium Abuja to cover the protests shortly after noon on Saturday. Reports say more than 40 people have been killed since Thursday across Nigeria, with dozens injured.
Soyinka condemned the use of live rounds to disperse protesters, noting that the protest itself was not unique to Nigeria alone, recounting how similar natuonwide protests took place in France as recently as 2022 and 2023.
The scholar further added that the nation was long overdue to abandon permanently, describing the use of lethal force by security agencies as old fashioned.
He added that the protest in the country could degenerate to revolution if their agitations were subdue like it was done.
Soyinka said, “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,” the celebrated literature icon said in a statement on Sunday. “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 SOS, not peculiar to the Nigerian nation,” wrote the nonagenarian.
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“Firing live bullets at peaceful protesters who bemoaned hunger in the land, according to Mr Soyinka, symbolises an “ominous retrogression, the kind that precedes upheavals and most likely “revolutions.”
“The serving of bullets where bread is pleaded is ominous retrogression, and we know what that eventually prove, a prelude to far more desperate upheavals, not excluding revolutions”.
