Nobel laureate Prof Wole Soyinka has criticised President Bola Tinubu for failing to address the shooting of protesters in his nationwide broadcast on Sunday morning.
Six people protesting over hunger were reportedly killed on August 1 during clashes with police in Minna, Niger State capital. One person was reportedly killed and another critically wounded by stray bullets fired by police in Kano, where another set of protesters breached the seat of government in the city. The police have denied killing any protester.
Soyinka, 90, said in a statement that the failure to rein in on security agencies would further breed impunity.
“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,” Soyinka said.
“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 renowned playwright said the response towards hunger marches takes the nation further back than the deadly ENDSARS protests to pre-independence era.
He recalled how protesters in France during the Yellow Vest movement were never fired a bullet nor teargas by the police.
Soyinka described it as serving bullets where bread is pleaded in allusion to Herbert Ogunde’s folk opera Bread and Bullets.
“The time is long overdue, surely, to abandon, permanently, the anachronistic resort to lethal means by the security agencies of governance,” he added.
