Students’ Killing: Nigeria At War, Buhari Must Seek Help — Soyinka

Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka on Saturday said the
government of President Muhammadu Buhari must seek help as Nigeria
is at war.

Soyinka spoke while reacting to the brutal killing of three of
the abducted students of Greenfield University, Kaduna.

The Nobel Laureate, in a statement, said Abukakar Atiku had
summed up the nation’s feeling – “this most recent savagery against
our youth is heartbreaking. More than the heart is broken however,
more than millions of individual hearts that still lay claim to
bonds in a common humanity.”

Soyinka lamented that the already over-stretched sinews of moral
restraint had been snapped off the casing of nation being, and that
nothing was left but the collective wails of impotence.

“Not for the first time, what many hoped was a Natural Law of
Limitations has been contemptuously, defiantly breached. We need to
remind ourselves of hideous precedents. We must remember Chibok.
And Dapchi. And numerous antecedents and after, unpublicized, or
soon relegated to the sump of collective amnesia. The wages of
impunity never diminish, on the contrary, they distend,” he
said.

Soyinka stated that one’s greatest fear, with this latest feat
of cowardly savagery was that the nation must brace itself for a
Beslan scenario, yet strive to avoid Nigeria becoming Africa’s
Cherchnya.

According to him, those who had been proven weak and incapable
must learn to swallow their vain pride and seek help.

“Again, this is no new counseling, but of course the dog that
will get lost no longer heeds the hunter’s whistle. I envy no one
the task ahead, terminating the toxic harvest of past
derelictions.

“Blame laying is for later. Right now is the question of – what
needs to be done, and done urgently. We keep avoiding the
inevitable, but that very unthinkable now hammers brutishly on our
gates, the blood ransom arrogantly insatiable.

“This nation is at war, yet we continue to pretend that these
are mere birth-pangs of a glorious entity. They are death throes.
Vultures and undertakers hover patiently but with full confidence,”
he stated.

Soyinka added: “The dogs of war stopped merely baying years ago.
Again and again they have sunk their fangs into the jugular of this
nation. The plague called COVID has met its match on the earth of
some nation space once known as Nigeria.”

The Nobel Laureate said he grieved with the bereaved, but
mourned even more for the youth so routinely sacrificed, burdened
with uncertainty and traumatized beyond youth’s capacity to
cope.

“To this government we repeat the public cry: Seek Help. Stop
Improvising with Human Lives. Youth – that is, the the future –
should not serve as Ritual Offering on the altar of a failing
State,” he said.

Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka on Saturday said the
government of President Muhammadu Buhari must seek help as Nigeria
is at war.

Soyinka spoke while reacting to the brutal killing of three of
the abducted students of Greenfield University, Kaduna.

The Nobel Laureate, in a statement, said Abukakar Atiku had
summed up the nation’s feeling – “this most recent savagery against
our youth is heartbreaking. More than the heart is broken however,
more than millions of individual hearts that still lay claim to
bonds in a common humanity.”

Soyinka lamented that the already over-stretched sinews of moral
restraint had been snapped off the casing of nation being, and that
nothing was left but the collective wails of impotence.

“Not for the first time, what many hoped was a Natural Law of
Limitations has been contemptuously, defiantly breached. We need to
remind ourselves of hideous precedents. We must remember Chibok.
And Dapchi. And numerous antecedents and after, unpublicized, or
soon relegated to the sump of collective amnesia. The wages of
impunity never diminish, on the contrary, they distend,” he
said.

Soyinka stated that one’s greatest fear, with this latest feat
of cowardly savagery was that the nation must brace itself for a
Beslan scenario, yet strive to avoid Nigeria becoming Africa’s
Cherchnya.

According to him, those who had been proven weak and incapable
must learn to swallow their vain pride and seek help.

“Again, this is no new counseling, but of course the dog that
will get lost no longer heeds the hunter’s whistle. I envy no one
the task ahead, terminating the toxic harvest of past
derelictions.

“Blame laying is for later. Right now is the question of – what
needs to be done, and done urgently. We keep avoiding the
inevitable, but that very unthinkable now hammers brutishly on our
gates, the blood ransom arrogantly insatiable.

“This nation is at war, yet we continue to pretend that these
are mere birth-pangs of a glorious entity. They are death throes.
Vultures and undertakers hover patiently but with full confidence,”
he stated.

Soyinka added: “The dogs of war stopped merely baying years ago.
Again and again they have sunk their fangs into the jugular of this
nation. The plague called COVID has met its match on the earth of
some nation space once known as Nigeria.”

The Nobel Laureate said he grieved with the bereaved, but
mourned even more for the youth so routinely sacrificed, burdened
with uncertainty and traumatized beyond youth’s capacity to
cope.

“To this government we repeat the public cry: Seek Help. Stop
Improvising with Human Lives. Youth – that is, the the future –
should not serve as Ritual Offering on the altar of a failing
State,” he said.