Ruth Semilore
Nobel laureate Professor Wole Soyinka has sharply criticized President Bola Tinubu’s nationwide address, arguing that it neglected to address the severe crackdown on #EndBadGovernance protesters by security forces.
As citizens across Nigeria protested against the escalating cost of living, economic hardship, and the recent removal of fuel subsidies and currency devaluation, the demonstrations turned violent in some regions, resulting in fatalities.
In response, President Tinubu delivered his first nationwide speech since the unrest, urging calm and reaffirming his stance on the subsidy removal.
However, in a statement on Sunday, Soyinka expressed disappointment with the government’s handling of the protests, noting that the President’s proposed remedies seemed inadequate.
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He criticized the security forces for their heavy-handed approach, highlighting the use of live ammunition and tear gas against demonstrators. Soyinka argued that such measures only exacerbate public frustration and perpetuate a cycle of violence and resentment.
Soyinka compared Nigeria’s current situation to historical precedents, suggesting that the government’s response recalls the colonial era’s repressive tactics. He called for a shift away from using lethal force and urged the security agencies to learn from international examples of non-violent protest management, such as France’s Yellow Vest movement.
In conclusion, Soyinka emphasized the need for a transformation in how protests are managed, advocating for an approach that addresses public grievances without resorting to violence.
But in a statement on Sunday, Soyinka specifically criticised the steps reeled out by the President since the protests started.
“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,” Soyinka said.
To Soyinka, the “nation’s security agencies cannot pretend unawareness of alternative models for emulation, civilized advances in security intervention”.
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“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 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.
“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,” he said.
