600 Kastina school children abduction: Nigeria is a nation at war, says Soyinka

600 Kastina school children abduction: Nigeria is a nation at war, says Soyinka

Nigeria is at war and at war within itself, so declared Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka in a tirade to President Muhammadu Buhari on the abduction of school children by gunmen in his home state, Kastina, the biggest in the country’s history of terrorism, violent extremism and organized crime.

“A government refuses to accept that, as indicated several times over, the nation is at war. At war within itself, and that it requires drastic measures, away from spasmodic responses after the dread deed, if there is any will leftover to salvage what is left of nationhood.

“The appropriate expression here is “thinking outside the box”.  When others do, they deserve better than to be rewarded with banalities such as: The government will not be stampeded. The presidency will not be blackmailed. Stop politicizing the issue. The president is committed to preserving the integrity of the nation. We will not be bullied into abandoning our commitment to national unity The sovereignty of the nation is non-negotiable….and so on and on, ad nauseam,’’ Soyinka said.

He called on Buhari to urgently put machinery in motion to overhaul the nation’s structural existence following escalating insecurity in the country.

“What is tragically demonstrated daily in all departments of citizen survival is the need to overhaul the nation’s structural existence – beginning, obviously, with the imperative of guaranteeing that very existence,’’ Soyinka said in a statement, entitled: “INFRADIG – A Presidential Comeuppance.”

He added: “He did not consider it infradig at the beginning.. He responded to the polite invitation to rub minds urgently over a people’s security anxieties as one who still struggled to preserve the tattered remains of his ‘Born-Again’ democratic camouflage.

“However, his reversal of consent raised yet again the frightening situation report I have fervently posed: Buhari is not in charge.  Whoever is, that segment of the cabalistic control obviously cornered him on the way to the lawmakers’ chambers and urged :  Don’t! Their invitation is infradig! He succumbed.

“Beneath the dignity of a Commander-in-Chief! Well. The opportunistic homicidal respondents – Bandits/Boko Haram or whoever – thereupon picked up the gauntlet and provided a response in their own language: abduction once again of the nation’s children. They handed him a slap across the face, on his home terrain, taunting: See if that is more suited to your dignity.”

According to him, if only this latest outrage were a personal contest of slights between insurgency and power – alas, its resonance is felt far beyond.

“It is merely the latest in the serial stinging slaps across the face of the nation, and it draws blood from every sensing citizen. Over five years since Chibok, we have yet to anticipate, and to guard against a repeat. We continue to hand over innocent wards cheaply, en masse, to the agents of darkness and despair.’’

Soyinka asked: “Has anyone been detected marching to a contrary tune? Sure, we are assailed with such minority rhetoric from time to time but is “unity” what is profoundly at stake?

“Does such predictable rhetoric remotely touch upon the existential anxiety of millions of humanity? Or are we confronted, at its most primary level with a growing question of the ability of the nation to even feed herself?

“When defenseless farmers are set upon – what does it matter if it is fifty or a hundred? – are butchered in one fell swoop, harvesting their crop, does the sheer suggestion that they met their deaths because they did not seek military cover not speak to the parlous state of a nation, and her need to urgently “think outside the box”?

The Nobel laureate concluded with a bang: “The rest is waffle. Vaseline massage on malignant tumor. National Infradig! Again, the Nation laments – and waits.’’