In an interview on Monday on Arise TV, the NOBEL Laureate and elder statesman Wole Soyinka have said Nigeria may not celebrate another Democracy Day if President Muhammadu Buhari fails to listen to the people after listening to the President’s speech and seeing the way the Nigerian Police handled protesters.
The Nobel laureate noted that the tension in the country and the issue of insecurity is as a result of the president’s deafness to Nigerians.
Soyinka said and I quote; “I am saying this whole nation is about to self-destruct and I am not the only one saying it, and except Buhari and his government listen and take action, otherwise we would not celebrate another Democracy Day come next year,”.
The Nobel laureate said that kidnapping had become a business in Lagos, Ogun, Kwara and other states but the president acts like everything is okay. But really, nothing is working in this country, poverty is on the increase, killings and so on.
Soyinka argued that the creation of a regional security outfit, Western Nigeria Security Network codenamed Operation Amotekun, was as a result of the frustration and desperation felt by the people.
Buhari was still asleep and unaware that the nation had changed dramatically over the last few years and it’s time whoever is the head of this country should listen to the people for more accountability.
Soyinka said that Buhari must also understand that the threat of disintegration in the country had accelerated in the last couple of years beyond what was obtainable since the
Soyinka also spoke on the Twitter ban in Nigeria, how hampering on channels of self-expression open to any polity amounted to absolutely destroying the very essence of democracy.
Soyinka noted that although the president had shown a symbolic gesture of restitution by recognising June 12 as Democracy Day, such an act must be consistently manifested. He said, “Democracy is not a sequence or spasm of symbolic gesture such as restoring June 12 as the Democracy Day, it is an act of restitution.
“That restoration was obviously a symbolic gesture, very calculative, but it has to be manifested consistently without exception in the act and when you truncate any channel of self-expression of the people, you are literally becoming an enemy of democracy,”.
