Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, has recommended a critical song by the late drama legend, Hubert Ogunde, for the hardship protesters in response to the shootings that have occurred since Thursday when the agitation started.
Soyinka, in a statement on Sunday, condemned how the security agents have handled the protests, saying some were using live bullets against the protesters.
According to him, the development brings back echoes of the colonial oppression that Ogunde sang about in ‘Bread and Bullet’.
He noted in the statement: “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.”
