WOLE SOYINKA: NOBEL ACTIVIST EMERITUS

For his care for the wellbeing of the people of Benue State and Nigeria, I wish to pay tribute to Prof. Wole Soyinka and in my mind tag him henceforth as “Nobel-Activist Emeritus.” He deserves that and much more because whilst he devotes his time and energy to decry injustice here and there, top dogs from Benue State like Gen. Lawrence Onoja and ex-Gov. George Akume were captured on camera in full jolly mood when President Muhammadu Buhari reluctantly visited Benue State.

What was the whole jollity about? Whilst Prof Soyinka wails for the folks of Benue State, it is sad to understand that those who should tell Buhari the blunt truth were all too happy to do photo-ops with him in Makurdi. Unfortunately for Benue State and other crisis-ridden parts of Nigeria the die is cast: if President Buhari concludes that a “shrinking Lake Chad” is the reason why Fulanis from Niger, Chad, Cameroon, and the Central African Republic must necessarily descend on the Benue Valley in droves then the die is cast hard in a negative format, as it were. If Defence Minister Mansur Dan-Ali posits that the Fulanis are righteously indignant because “cattle routes are blocked” and thus they must kill to get passage then the die is strongly cast hard in that negative format. If the runaway Inspector-General of Police, Idris Kpotun Ibrahim, holds that the one-sided killings in Benue State are mere “communal clashes” then the die is now annealed cast-hard in that negative format. If Miyetti Allah Cattle Breeders Association and Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore want the Benue State Open-Grazing Prohibition and Ranches Establishment Law repealed by a presidential fiat then the mould that cast the hard die is structurally deficient. It is so sad about Nigeria, but if we do not confront reality and speak the truth, then the pathway to finding a solution would continue to elude us; such veracity-confrontation is telling ourselves the truth about Boko Haram, especially.

The well-orchestrated pogrom in the Northeast of Nigeria and now this well-planned decimation of the natives of the Middle Belt region can only mean that Islamic jihad has long been launched but those who sympathise with the cause are smart to hide under political correctness and have gullible Christian politicians say it is “insurgency fomented by bad governance;” and by “bad governance” we know where the fingers of these APC Christian minnows are pointing. Sunday Adole Jonah, Department of Physics, Federal University of Technology, Minna, Niger State