Winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature, Professor Wole Soyinka has declared that Nigeria is in state of war.
Accordingly, the respected playwright, novelist, essayist and Poet has urged the Nigerian authorities to set aside pride and seek help.
Soyinka who issued a statement entitled, “The Endless Martyrdom Of Youth” however did not say whether the government should seek local or external help.
His quest for a solution to the crisis which is ravaging the country is coming against the backdrop of a comment by Senator Bola Tinubu.
Tinubu had suggested a few days ago that certain forces are fighting very hard to ensure that the country disintegrates.
Soyinka observed that the nation was going through a very trying period, stressing that there was no need for the government to continue to pretend that all is well.
“Abubakar Atiku has summed up the nation’s feeling – this most recent savagery against our youth is heart-breaking.
“More than the heart is broken. However, more than millions of individual hearts still lay claim to bonds in a common humanity”, Professor Soyinka noted.
“The already over-stretched sinews of moral restraint have been snapped off the casing of nation being”, the Nobel Laurette remarked, “and nothing is left but the collective wails of impotence.”
Warning that things are falling apart, the, Poet said, “Not for the first time, what many hoped was a Natural Law of Limitations has been contemptuously, defiantly breached.
“We need to remind ourselves of hideous precedents. We must remember Chibok. And Dapchi. And numerous antecedents and after, unpublicised, or soon relegated to the sump of collective amnesia.
“The wages of impunity never diminish, on the contrary, they distend. One’s greatest fear, with this latest feat of cowardly savagery, is that the nation must brace itself for a Beslan scenario, yet strive to avoid Nigeria become Africa’s Chechnya.”
According to him, those who have been proven weak and incapable must learn to swallow their vain pride and seek help.
“Again, this is no new counselling, but of course, the dog that will get lost no longer heeds the hunter’s whistle”, the 86-year-old pointed out.
Soyinka warned Nigerians against what he described as the “blame trade”, saying that the times do not allow for such pastime.
“I envy no one the task ahead, terminating the toxic harvest of past derelictions. Blame laying is for later. Right now is the question of – what needs to be done, and done urgently.
“We keep avoiding the inevitable, but that very unthinkable now hammers brutishly on our gates, the blood ransom arrogantly insatiable.
“This nation is at war, yet we continue to pretend that these are mere birth-pangs of a glorious entity.
“They are death throes. Vultures and undertakers hover patiently but with full confidence. The dogs of war stopped merely baying years ago. Again and again, they have sunk their fangs into the jugular of this nation.”
He warned that Nigerians, particularly its youths, were bearing the brunt of the instability that is currently rocking the country, emphasizing that they could no longer cope with the traumatic experiences that have befallen them.
“The plague called COVID has met its match on the earth of some nation space once known as Nigeria. I grieve with the bereaved, but mourn even more for our youth so routinely sacrificed, burdened with uncertainty, and traumatised beyond youth’s capacity to cope.
“To this government, we repeat the public cry: Seek Help. Stop Improvising with Human Lives. Youth – that is, the future – should not serve as Ritual Offering on the altar of a failing State.”