Soyinka Slams Tinubu’s Speech As Failing To Address Security Agencies’ Brutality

• Condemns brutal crackdown on protesters

Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, has faulted the national broadcast by President Bola Tinubu over the ongoing #EndBadGovernenace protest, insisting that it failed to address the security agencies’ brutal crackdown of the protesters.

The President had on Sunday morning addressed Nigerians who took to major cities in a nationwide protest against hunger, hardship, poverty and high cost of living.

The protesters are laying the blame of the nation’s current woes solely on fuel subsidy removal and Naira floating, among other policies of the Tinubu-led Federal Government since his inauguration on May 29, 2023.

However, reacting to the President’s national address urging peace and dialogue with protesters, but insisting there is backpedaling on the subsidy removal, Prof Soyinka specifically criticised the steps reeled out by the President since the protests started.

According to to the Nobel Laureate, “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.”

The nonagenarian further said the “nation’s security agencies cannot pretend unawareness of alternative models for emulation, civilized advances in security intervention”, adding; “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.”

In a statement titled; “The HUNGER MARCH As UNIVERSAL MANDATE”, the Nigerian playwright, novelist, and poet also said; “Live bullets as a 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.”

He said events during the protest unfortunately “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”.

Here is the full statement

The HUNGER MARCH As UNIVERSAL MANDATE

“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 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.

“The nation’s security agencies cannot pretend unawareness of alternative models for emulation, civilized advances in security intervention. 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.

Wole SOYINKA