Nigerian playwright and novelist Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde “Wole” Soyinka CFR responded to President Bola Tinubu’s address about the #EndBadGovernance protest.
In a statement released on Sunday following Tinubu’s speech, Soyinka attacked President Bola Tinubu for failing to mention the security forces’ brutal suppression of #EndBadGovernance demonstrators during his most recent national broadcast.
On the fourth day, people continued to demonstrate against bad governance and deteriorating economic conditions by participating in #EndBadGovernance protests.
“To ensure that I did not miss President Bola Tinubu’s eagerly anticipated address to the nation on the current unrest throughout the nation,”Soyinka said, “I set my alarm clock for this morning”
READ ALSO: [Full Speech] Broadcast By His Excellency Bola Ahmed Tinubu, President And Commander-In-Chief Of The Armed Forces Of The Federal Republic Of Nigeria, On The Nationwide Protest
Soyinka emphasised that using live bullets in reaction to nonviolent protests is a serious problem, pointing out that even tear gas is frequently used inappropriately in these circumstances. He said that the government’s strategy just feeds the cycle of animosity and retaliation and allows security personnel to act with impunity.
Hunger marches are a global cry for aid, marking a breaking point that requires government attention. He cautioned that the violent response to these rallies indicates a regression much more severe than the tragic aftermath of the ENDSARS protests.
“Nation’s security agencies cannot pretend unawareness of alternative models for emulation, civilised advances in security intervention,” stated Soyinka.
According to Soyinka, “His outline of 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.”
“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.”
“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 leveled 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.
“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.”
