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| Professor Wole Soyinka |
Soyinka also decried the way and manner
the Federal Government was handling the insurgency, saying it was
looking at it as a short term phenomenon that could be tackled with
short-term solutions.
He spoke on Wednesday via a video
conference with privately owned television station, Al Jazeera, on the
programme, The Stream, which focused on ‘Bringing Down Boko Haram’.
The programme also featured the Senior
Special Assistant to the President on Public Affairs, Dr. Doyin Okupe,
and publisher of online news portal, Sahara Reporters, Omoyele Sowore.
He said, “Nigeria is in a war situation
and the entire population of Nigeria must consider itself as being in a
war situation and that means the Boko Haram phenomenon should not be
regarded as been limited to the Northern region alone or Borno and Yobe
states.
“No, its is something that affects the
entire country because these people have declared categorically that
they would not be satisfied with nothing less than not only the
islamisation of Nigeria but islamisation in their own very narrow,
distorted and vicious mode; and they will not be satisfied.”
Soyinka linked the proliferation and
availability of foot soliders to the Islamist sect to corruption,
misgovernance and massive youth unemployment.
He lamented that he was often at a loss on whether to describe the sect as human or not.
He said, “The nation, the government are
responsible for the proliferation and availability of foot soldiers and
this is due to corruption, mammoth corruption, misgovernance,
alienation, the level of unemployment, the distinct feelings –
impressionable youths – of not being part of the entire polity.
“What makes it possible for a human
being to behave in a way that we look for a new definition of humanity?
Even many of our politicians got their (to power) by violence.”
PUNCH
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