Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, has warned that violence against those protesting the hardship in the country can lead to more desperate actions that include a revolution.
He said this as he cautioned the police and other security agencies against using the gun against the protesters.
In a statement in which he reacted to President Bola Tinubu’s national address on Sunday, the legendary writer expressed expressed surprise that the President did not address the way the police were handling the agitation.
He said, “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…
“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.”
