Soyinka Backs Obasanjo, Agrees Nigeria Is Near Collapse

Posted by Nwa Diokpa African News, Latest Headlines, News, News Across Nigeria, News From The State, Uncategorized Tuesday, September 15th, 2020

(AFRICAN EXAMINER) – Nigeria’s playwright and Nobel laureate, has stated that he agrees with the statement of former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, who stated that the country is drifting towards a failed and divided state.

African Examiner recalls that Obasanjo had accused Buhari’s administration of mismanaging the country.

“Today, Nigeria is fast drifting to a failed and badly divided state, economically our country is becoming a basket case and poverty capital of the world, and socially, we are firming up as an unwholesome and insecure country,” Obasanjo had said.

Presidential spokesman, Garba Shehu, had called the former president as Nigeria’s divider-in-chief.

However in a statement on Tuesday, titled, ‘Between dividers-in-chief and dividers-in-law’, the Nobel Laureate stated that what Obasanjo is saying was the truth and what he stated was out of concern for the country.

Soyinka who described the former president as “co-architect of the crumbling edifice that is still generously called Nigeria” stated that the country has never been divided as it is “under the policies and conduct of none other than President Buhari”.

He said: “I am notoriously no fan of Olusegun Obasanjo, General, twice former president and co-architect with other past leaders of the crumbling edifice that is still generously called Nigeria. I have no reasons to change my stance on his record. Nonetheless.

“I embrace the responsibility of calling attention to any accurate reading of this nation from whatever source, as a contraption teetering on the very edge of total collapse.

“We are close to extinction as a viable comity of peoples, supposedly bound together under an equitable set of protocols of co-habitation, capable of producing its own means of existence, and devoid of a culture of sectarian privilege and will to dominate.

“The nation is divided as never before, and this ripping division has taken place under the policies and conduct of none other than President Buhari – does that claim belong in the realms of speculation?

“Does anyone deny that it was this president who went to sleep while communities were consistently ravaged by cattle marauders, were raped and displaced in their thousands and turned into beggars all over the landscape? Was it a different president who, on being finally persuaded to visit a scene of carnage, had nothing more authoritative to offer than to advice the traumatised victims to learn to live peacefully with their violators?

Speaking on the achievements of President Buhari, the Nobel Laureate stated that it is normal for any government to accomplish any feat.

He said: “It takes real genius to succeed in spending four years actually doing nothing. What it fails to do, or what it does wrongly, deceitfully or prejudicially is what concerns the citizenry.

“To reel off any achievements of a government – genuine or fantasised, trivial or monumental – is thus to dodge the issue, to ignore the real core concerns. No government, however inept, fails to record some form of achievement – this was why it were elected.

“What it fails to do, or what it does wrongly, deceitfully or prejudicially is what concerns the citizenry. Across this nation, there is profound distrust, indeed abandonment of hope in this government as one that is genuinely committed to the survival of the nation.

“National divisiveness? Just where does culpability lie? Does centralist usurpation divide or bind? The answer is obvious in daily effects.”