Nobel laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka has criticized President Bola Tinubu’s recent nationwide address, stating it failed to address the violent crackdown on #EndBadGovernance protesters by security agencies.
In a statement released on Sunday, following Tinubu’s address, Soyinka expressed his disappointment with the president’s lack of focus on the attacks against peaceful demonstrators.
The #EndBadGovernance protests, which began on August 1, have been driven by widespread discontent over economic hardship and government policies.
The demonstrations have seen thousands take to the streets, demanding government action to address the high cost of living and other socio-economic issues.
Several incidents of violence, including deaths and looting, have marred the protests, exacerbating the already tense situation and leading to calls for the protests to end.
The South East and South West have largely witnessed peaceful rallies.
Soyinka, who recently explained his decision not to comment on Tinubu’s performance for now, in his statement, remarked, “I set my alarm clock for this morning to ensure that I did not miss President Bola Tinubu’s impatiently awaited address to the nation on the current unrest across the nation.
“His outline of the government’s remedial action since inception, aimed at warding off just such an outbreak, will undoubtedly receive expert and sustained attention both for effectiveness and in content analysis.
“My primary concern, quite predictably, is the continuing deterioration of the state’s seizure of protest management, an area in which the presidential address fell conspicuously short.”
He further criticized the government’s use of live ammunition and tear gas against peaceful protesters, highlighting that such responses are severe misuses of force.
Soyinka emphasized that hunger marches are a universal cry for help, not unique to Nigeria, and should be met with compassion rather than brutality.
Soyinka continued, “Such short-changing of civic deserving, regrettably, goes to arm the security forces in the exercise of impunity and condemns the nation to a seemingly unbreakable cycle of resentment and reprisals.
“Live bullets as state response to civic protest – that becomes the core issue. Even tear gas remains questionable in most circumstances, certainly an abuse in situations of clearly peaceful protest.
“Hunger marches constitute a universal S.O.S, not peculiar to the Nigerian nation. They belong indeed in a class of their own, never mind the collateral claims emblazoned on posters.
“They serve as summons to governance that a breaking point has been reached and thus, a testing ground for governance awareness of public desperation.
“The tragic response to the ongoing hunger marches in parts of the nation, and for which notice was served, constitutes a retrogression that takes the nation even further back than the deadly culmination of the watershed ENDSARS protests.
“It evokes pre-independence – that is, colonial – acts of disdain, a passage that induced the late stage pioneer Hubert Ogunde’s folk opera BREAD AND BULLETS, earning that nationalist serial persecution and proscription by the colonial government.”
The Nobel laureate also highlighted alternative models of protest management, citing the YELLOW VEST movement in France as an example where security forces refrained from using lethal force against protesters.
“Need we recall the nationwide 2022/23 editions of what is generally known as the YELLOW VEST movement in France? Perhaps it is time to make such scenarios compulsory viewing in policing curriculum.
“In all of the coverage that I watched, I did not catch one single instance of a gun levelled at protesters, much less fired at them even during direct physical confrontations.
“The serving of bullets where bread is pleaded is ominous retrogression, and we know what that eventually proves – a prelude to far more desperate upheavals, not excluding revolutions.”
Soyinka concluded by urging the Nigerian government to abandon the use of lethal force against civilians and to learn from its own history to foster a more humane approach to civic protests.
“The time is long overdue, surely, to abandon, permanently, the anachronistic resort to lethal means by the security agencies of governance.
“No nation is so under-developed, materially impoverished, or simply internally insecure as to lack the will to set an example.
“All it takes is to recall its own history, then exercise the will to commence a lasting transformation, inserting a break in the chain of lethal responses against civic society.
“Today’s marchers may wish to consider adopting the key songs of Hubert Ogunde’s BREAD AND BULLETS, if only to inculcate a sense of shame in the continuing failure to transcend the lure of colonial inheritance where we all were at the receiving end.
“One way or the other, this vicious cycle must be broken.”
