*Says Nigeria’s sovereignty taken over by armed
groups
![image](/2020/10/lawreport.jpg")
Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, on Saturday asked the
Federal Government to seek foreign assistance in dealing with the
security challenge in the country.
![image](/2020/10/NWLRland.jpg")
Soyinka said on Arise TV that the current situation was so bad
that government should not shy away from paying “people to come and
help us” in the fight against the Boko Haram insurgency and other
threats to life and property.
“Let them get away with the issue of sovereignty. If they have
to pay people to come and help us, then call them whatever you
want. Please go ahead because we’ve reached that stage of
desperation,” Soyinka said.
But he said “a general mobilization” of Nigerians to defend
themselves could be more like it.
His words: “I will prefer a general mobilisation in which people
are trained; farmers especially are trained to work with the hoe in
one hand and the gun in the other hand, ready to protect their
lives, their harvests and the rest of us.
“We are not unique; history is full of those situations… I will
like to see a national mobilization. Let’s be practical.”
He wondered why some northern governors had to negotiate with
bandits terrorising their states.
He said: “You don’t appease evil. We are dealing with evil.
There is no other word; we are dealing with the proliferation, the
enthronement of evil in the society.
“And unfortunately, we have encouraged its manifestation, its
proliferation, its entrenchment.”
Soyinka who also spoke on the South West Security Network,
Amotekun, warned that the outfit must not transmute into the
scrapped special anti-robbery squad (SARS) in another guise.
Amotekun has been accused of extrajudicial killings and high
handedness; the same complaints against the police that sparked
last year’s #ENDSARS protests across the country.
Soyinka said it was important to inculcate ethics in Amotekun
members to make them understand their role and responsibility.
He said: “Community policing like Amotekun is recognition of the
fact that the civic part of the entire national polity has got to
wake up in not just its own defence but survival.
“I have told them anytime you want us to come and assist, we
will come, even if it is just on the ethical session. So that as
you are training them to defend us, we are also training their
minds so that Amotekun does not become another SARS. It’s very
important. We must do everything together.”
He said Nigerians should learn to take responsibility for their
own survival and advised other parts of the country that are yet to
have their own security outfits to do so.
“The citizens have got to take a very good look at huge gap in
governance, the lacuna in governance in this nation, and then take
responsibility for their own survival,” he said.
“This is what makes our own responsibilities for ourselves as
citizens even more difficult because when drama like that happens
we go to the very heart of our existence as human beings to see our
children have been swept up not for the first time, and we cannot
have a clear sequence of events articulated by the security
agencies, by the government so that we can even take on our own
against such events happening in the nation.
“But when we reach that stage, you no longer talk of a nation
but of a contraption struggling along. The sovereignty of this
nation is in the hands of murdering herdsmen; the sovereignty of
this nation has already been taken over by Boko Haram, those who do
nothing at the slightest respect for what is called national
integrity.
“I am very glad that northern elites are now speaking out boldly
and practically and at the same time all these states, I’d like
them to come out, passing these message to those who have not yet
launched their own Amotekun. If they don’t hurry, I will launch my
own o.”
He hailed the #ENDSARS protests as “righteous, well organised
and long-overdue movement by a generation over whom one has been
uttering noises of despair.”
He was particularly happy that the Nigerian youth who organised
the protests “finally moved.”
“And finally, finally they moved. The youths moved,” he
said.
He added: “To me, they made many of us proud. This is a kind of
generation that seems to pick up positive signs in their existence
and now are taking charge.”
*Says Nigeria’s sovereignty taken over by armed
groups
Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, on Saturday asked the
Federal Government to seek foreign assistance in dealing with the
security challenge in the country.
Soyinka said on Arise TV that the current situation was so bad
that government should not shy away from paying “people to come and
help us” in the fight against the Boko Haram insurgency and other
threats to life and property.
“Let them get away with the issue of sovereignty. If they have
to pay people to come and help us, then call them whatever you
want. Please go ahead because we’ve reached that stage of
desperation,” Soyinka said.
But he said “a general mobilization” of Nigerians to defend
themselves could be more like it.
His words: “I will prefer a general mobilisation in which people
are trained; farmers especially are trained to work with the hoe in
one hand and the gun in the other hand, ready to protect their
lives, their harvests and the rest of us.
“We are not unique; history is full of those situations… I will
like to see a national mobilization. Let’s be practical.”
He wondered why some northern governors had to negotiate with
bandits terrorising their states.
He said: “You don’t appease evil. We are dealing with evil.
There is no other word; we are dealing with the proliferation, the
enthronement of evil in the society.
“And unfortunately, we have encouraged its manifestation, its
proliferation, its entrenchment.”
Soyinka who also spoke on the South West Security Network,
Amotekun, warned that the outfit must not transmute into the
scrapped special anti-robbery squad (SARS) in another guise.
Amotekun has been accused of extrajudicial killings and high
handedness; the same complaints against the police that sparked
last year’s #ENDSARS protests across the country.
Soyinka said it was important to inculcate ethics in Amotekun
members to make them understand their role and responsibility.
He said: “Community policing like Amotekun is recognition of the
fact that the civic part of the entire national polity has got to
wake up in not just its own defence but survival.
“I have told them anytime you want us to come and assist, we
will come, even if it is just on the ethical session. So that as
you are training them to defend us, we are also training their
minds so that Amotekun does not become another SARS. It’s very
important. We must do everything together.”
He said Nigerians should learn to take responsibility for their
own survival and advised other parts of the country that are yet to
have their own security outfits to do so.
“The citizens have got to take a very good look at huge gap in
governance, the lacuna in governance in this nation, and then take
responsibility for their own survival,” he said.
“This is what makes our own responsibilities for ourselves as
citizens even more difficult because when drama like that happens
we go to the very heart of our existence as human beings to see our
children have been swept up not for the first time, and we cannot
have a clear sequence of events articulated by the security
agencies, by the government so that we can even take on our own
against such events happening in the nation.
“But when we reach that stage, you no longer talk of a nation
but of a contraption struggling along. The sovereignty of this
nation is in the hands of murdering herdsmen; the sovereignty of
this nation has already been taken over by Boko Haram, those who do
nothing at the slightest respect for what is called national
integrity.
“I am very glad that northern elites are now speaking out boldly
and practically and at the same time all these states, I’d like
them to come out, passing these message to those who have not yet
launched their own Amotekun. If they don’t hurry, I will launch my
own o.”
He hailed the #ENDSARS protests as “righteous, well organised
and long-overdue movement by a generation over whom one has been
uttering noises of despair.”
He was particularly happy that the Nigerian youth who organised
the protests “finally moved.”
“And finally, finally they moved. The youths moved,” he
said.
He added: “To me, they made many of us proud. This is a kind of
generation that seems to pick up positive signs in their existence
and now are taking charge.”