Twitter Suspension: It Is A Petulant Gesture – Soyinka Advises Buhari How To Deal With Twitter

Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has hit out at President
Muhammadu Buhari, over his decision to ban Twitter in Nigeria.

According to the Nobel Laureate, if Buhari has a problem with
the microblogging platform, he should sort it out between them
personally, the way ex-US president Donald Trump did and not rope
in the right to free expression of the Nigerian citizen as
collateral damage.

He said, “Heard the news of Buhari’s ban on Twitter an hour or
so after sending off TO SHOCK AND AWE to the print media. Kindly
add my total lack of surprise at this petulant gesture, unbecoming
of a democratically elected president.

“If Buhari has a problem with Twitter, he is advised to sort it
out between them personally, the way Donald Trump did, not rope in
the right to free expression of the Nigerian citizen as collateral
damage.

“In any case, this is a technical problem Nigerians should be
able to work their way around. The field of free expression remains
wide open, free of any dictatorial spasms!”

Soyinka added that Buhari’s comments about Igbo genocide was
absolutely unpresidential.

“We heard it last during the heydays of Donald Rumsfeld under
George Bush – and judge in what condition it has left that part of
the world, and beyond. Rumsfeld’s namesake – a sobering coincidence
– also spat the same gung-ho rhetoric. That Donald once ordered his
uniformed forces to ‘go out there’ and ‘dominate the environment’,
following civilian protests at extra-judicial killings of blacks by
state police. Soon enough, leaving nothing to chance, that Donald
II seized on the first opportunity to personally mobilize a mob to
‘dominate’ Capitol Hill, his own seat of government that was
clearly slipping from his control.

“Optimists are free to underplay that threat to the much
acclaimed democratic beacon. Study that scenario carefully however,
and you find It is not a question of: it could never have
succeeded. Such surmises are wrong, It COULD HAVE SUCCEEDED, albeit
with unpredictable consequences for America and the world.

“And so when the elected head of a democratic state like
Nigeria, not perched precariously on the knife edge of power but
with a couple more years in the kitty, threatens to ‘shock’
dissidents, we should indeed be shocked out of any complacency.
Even if History has been deliberately eliminated from the schools
curriculum, Memory suffices to jerk us into a watchful,
precautionary alert.

“I hold no brief for those who resort to burning down police
stations, slaughter their occupants simply for the crime of earning
a measly monthly pittance, torch electoral offices , assassinate
politicians in calculated effort to set sections of the country
against others in the promotion of their own political goals. These
are largely nihilists, psychopaths and/or criminal lords, soul
mates of Boko Haram, ISWAP, Da’esh and company, not to be confused
with genuine liberators. All over the world, throughout history,
elections are denounced, boycotted, and generally delegitimized
without recourse to wanton butchery.

“When, however, a Head of State threatens to ‘shock’ civilian
dissidents, to ‘deal with them in the language they understand’,
and in a context that conveniently brackets opposition to
governance with any bloodthirsting enemies of state, we have to
call attention to the precedent language of such a national leader
under even more provocative, nation disintegrative circumstances.
What a pity, and what a tragic setting, to discover that this
language was accessible all the time to President Buhari, where and
when it truly mattered, when it would have been not only
appropriate, but deserved and mandatory!

“When Benue was first massively brought under siege, with the
massacre of innocent citizens, the destruction of farms, mass
displacement followed by alien occupation, Buhari’s language – both
as utterance and as what is known as ‘body language’ – was of a
totally different temper. It was diffident, conciliatory, even
apologetic. After much internal pressure, he eventually visited the
scene of slaughter. His language? Learn to live peacefully with
your neighbours. The expected language, rationally and legitimately
applied to the aggressors, was exactly what we now hear – ‘I shall
shock you. I shall deal with you in the language you understand’.
That language was missing at the moment that mattered most. It
remained “missing in action” for years until a belated “Shoot at
sight” outburst. Too late, and of course, inappropriately
phrased.

“The precedent had been set, the genie let out of the bottle,
consolidating a culture of impunity that predictably spread its
bloody stain all over the nation. Buhari’s recent deployment of
this language is thus wrongly targeted, and tragically untimely.
Even while he was threatening dissidents, an agenda of both
secessionism and alien occupation was taking place not too distant
from Aso Rock. ISWAP was taking over the already excised
territories of Shekau’s Boko Haram, appointing new warlords of the
occupational forces, sectioning Nigeria into vassal states and
unfurling their replacement flags of domination. Soon, logically,
ISWAP’s letters of diplomatic accreditation will be presented in
Aso Rock?

“We must however backtrack a little – that is the function of
memory. It would be false to suggest that these eggs of impunity
are newly laid. They have been incubating in loathsome hatcheries
of power and domination for years, even decades, and now the
raptors have been hatched and taken wings. The political culture of
the devil’s bargain, of denial, evasion, avoidance of
constitutional mandates, the culture of ‘appeasement of the
unappeasable’ – to quote myself – in order to gratify the vested
interests of a narrow, power obsessed elite has blossomed. Finally,
the chickens have come home to roost.

“The evocation of the Civil War, where millions of civilians
perished, is an unworthy emotive ploy that has run its course. In
any case – and this has been voiced all too often, and loudly – the
nation is already at war, and of a far more potentially devastating
dimension than it has ever known. Every single occupant of this
nation space called Nigeria has been declared potential casualty,
children being pushed to the very battlefront, without a semblance
of protective cover. We have betrayed the future. We need no breast
beating about past wars. The world has moved on, so have nations.
Some, however, prefer to move backwards. The continent is full of
these atavists. In Nigeria, powerful cliques of this persuasion
still roam the corridors of power We are indeed at war. It does not
take the formal declaration of hostilities, with or without lethal
bombardments, for a nation to find itself shell-shocked. The
populace of this nation is already in that shell-shocked condition.
So, what is there left to shock?

“It is time to think ‘outside the box’. That many, in so doing,
find no landing place except dissolution, is not a crime. It is not
peculiar to any peoples, and is embedded in the ongoing history of
many, and not only on this continent. It is their natural right as
free citizens, not slaves of habit and indoctrination. Where
disillusion rides high, sentiment tumbles earthwards, and the only
question becomes: what can be salvaged? It thus remains the
responsibility of leadership to persuade them, through both
discourse and remedial action, that there are other options.
Attempted bullying is not a language of discourse, nor the facile
ploy of tarring all birds with the same feather.
I shall end on a personal note. It was not intended but, in view of
breast thumping rhetoric by one president after the other over
military sacrifice – undeniable, certainly – such recalls should be
considered salutary. The heroic exploits of our military in
confronting some of the deadliest internal forces of dehumanization
deserve their place of honour, not only in history, but in
contemporary consciousness.

“However, let not the military fail to take its place centrally
in the nation’s ongoing, unavoidable soul searching. And so to an
instructive intervention by this ‘bloody civilian’, in what should
be an exclusionary portfolio of the keepers of a nation’s mandate
for secure existence.”

Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has hit out at President
Muhammadu Buhari, over his decision to ban Twitter in Nigeria.

According to the Nobel Laureate, if Buhari has a problem with
the microblogging platform, he should sort it out between them
personally, the way ex-US president Donald Trump did and not rope
in the right to free expression of the Nigerian citizen as
collateral damage.

He said, “Heard the news of Buhari’s ban on Twitter an hour or
so after sending off TO SHOCK AND AWE to the print media. Kindly
add my total lack of surprise at this petulant gesture, unbecoming
of a democratically elected president.

“If Buhari has a problem with Twitter, he is advised to sort it
out between them personally, the way Donald Trump did, not rope in
the right to free expression of the Nigerian citizen as collateral
damage.

“In any case, this is a technical problem Nigerians should be
able to work their way around. The field of free expression remains
wide open, free of any dictatorial spasms!”

Soyinka added that Buhari’s comments about Igbo genocide was
absolutely unpresidential.

“We heard it last during the heydays of Donald Rumsfeld under
George Bush – and judge in what condition it has left that part of
the world, and beyond. Rumsfeld’s namesake – a sobering coincidence
– also spat the same gung-ho rhetoric. That Donald once ordered his
uniformed forces to ‘go out there’ and ‘dominate the environment’,
following civilian protests at extra-judicial killings of blacks by
state police. Soon enough, leaving nothing to chance, that Donald
II seized on the first opportunity to personally mobilize a mob to
‘dominate’ Capitol Hill, his own seat of government that was
clearly slipping from his control.

“Optimists are free to underplay that threat to the much
acclaimed democratic beacon. Study that scenario carefully however,
and you find It is not a question of: it could never have
succeeded. Such surmises are wrong, It COULD HAVE SUCCEEDED, albeit
with unpredictable consequences for America and the world.

“And so when the elected head of a democratic state like
Nigeria, not perched precariously on the knife edge of power but
with a couple more years in the kitty, threatens to ‘shock’
dissidents, we should indeed be shocked out of any complacency.
Even if History has been deliberately eliminated from the schools
curriculum, Memory suffices to jerk us into a watchful,
precautionary alert.

“I hold no brief for those who resort to burning down police
stations, slaughter their occupants simply for the crime of earning
a measly monthly pittance, torch electoral offices , assassinate
politicians in calculated effort to set sections of the country
against others in the promotion of their own political goals. These
are largely nihilists, psychopaths and/or criminal lords, soul
mates of Boko Haram, ISWAP, Da’esh and company, not to be confused
with genuine liberators. All over the world, throughout history,
elections are denounced, boycotted, and generally delegitimized
without recourse to wanton butchery.

“When, however, a Head of State threatens to ‘shock’ civilian
dissidents, to ‘deal with them in the language they understand’,
and in a context that conveniently brackets opposition to
governance with any bloodthirsting enemies of state, we have to
call attention to the precedent language of such a national leader
under even more provocative, nation disintegrative circumstances.
What a pity, and what a tragic setting, to discover that this
language was accessible all the time to President Buhari, where and
when it truly mattered, when it would have been not only
appropriate, but deserved and mandatory!

“When Benue was first massively brought under siege, with the
massacre of innocent citizens, the destruction of farms, mass
displacement followed by alien occupation, Buhari’s language – both
as utterance and as what is known as ‘body language’ – was of a
totally different temper. It was diffident, conciliatory, even
apologetic. After much internal pressure, he eventually visited the
scene of slaughter. His language? Learn to live peacefully with
your neighbours. The expected language, rationally and legitimately
applied to the aggressors, was exactly what we now hear – ‘I shall
shock you. I shall deal with you in the language you understand’.
That language was missing at the moment that mattered most. It
remained “missing in action” for years until a belated “Shoot at
sight” outburst. Too late, and of course, inappropriately
phrased.

“The precedent had been set, the genie let out of the bottle,
consolidating a culture of impunity that predictably spread its
bloody stain all over the nation. Buhari’s recent deployment of
this language is thus wrongly targeted, and tragically untimely.
Even while he was threatening dissidents, an agenda of both
secessionism and alien occupation was taking place not too distant
from Aso Rock. ISWAP was taking over the already excised
territories of Shekau’s Boko Haram, appointing new warlords of the
occupational forces, sectioning Nigeria into vassal states and
unfurling their replacement flags of domination. Soon, logically,
ISWAP’s letters of diplomatic accreditation will be presented in
Aso Rock?

“We must however backtrack a little – that is the function of
memory. It would be false to suggest that these eggs of impunity
are newly laid. They have been incubating in loathsome hatcheries
of power and domination for years, even decades, and now the
raptors have been hatched and taken wings. The political culture of
the devil’s bargain, of denial, evasion, avoidance of
constitutional mandates, the culture of ‘appeasement of the
unappeasable’ – to quote myself – in order to gratify the vested
interests of a narrow, power obsessed elite has blossomed. Finally,
the chickens have come home to roost.

“The evocation of the Civil War, where millions of civilians
perished, is an unworthy emotive ploy that has run its course. In
any case – and this has been voiced all too often, and loudly – the
nation is already at war, and of a far more potentially devastating
dimension than it has ever known. Every single occupant of this
nation space called Nigeria has been declared potential casualty,
children being pushed to the very battlefront, without a semblance
of protective cover. We have betrayed the future. We need no breast
beating about past wars. The world has moved on, so have nations.
Some, however, prefer to move backwards. The continent is full of
these atavists. In Nigeria, powerful cliques of this persuasion
still roam the corridors of power We are indeed at war. It does not
take the formal declaration of hostilities, with or without lethal
bombardments, for a nation to find itself shell-shocked. The
populace of this nation is already in that shell-shocked condition.
So, what is there left to shock?

“It is time to think ‘outside the box’. That many, in so doing,
find no landing place except dissolution, is not a crime. It is not
peculiar to any peoples, and is embedded in the ongoing history of
many, and not only on this continent. It is their natural right as
free citizens, not slaves of habit and indoctrination. Where
disillusion rides high, sentiment tumbles earthwards, and the only
question becomes: what can be salvaged? It thus remains the
responsibility of leadership to persuade them, through both
discourse and remedial action, that there are other options.
Attempted bullying is not a language of discourse, nor the facile
ploy of tarring all birds with the same feather.
I shall end on a personal note. It was not intended but, in view of
breast thumping rhetoric by one president after the other over
military sacrifice – undeniable, certainly – such recalls should be
considered salutary. The heroic exploits of our military in
confronting some of the deadliest internal forces of dehumanization
deserve their place of honour, not only in history, but in
contemporary consciousness.

“However, let not the military fail to take its place centrally
in the nation’s ongoing, unavoidable soul searching. And so to an
instructive intervention by this ‘bloody civilian’, in what should
be an exclusionary portfolio of the keepers of a nation’s mandate
for secure existence.”