Nobel Laureate and elder statesman Wole Soyinka has advised the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari to seek help.
Soyinka said this in a statement on Saturday titled, “The endless martyrdom of youth,’ saying that the Nigerian government should stop improvising with human lives.
The Nobel Laureate added that the youth of the nation who are its future should not be served as a ritual offering on the altar of a failing state.
“Those who have been proven weak and incapable must learn to swallow their vain pride and seek help. Again, this is no new counselling, but of course the dog that will get lost no longer heeds the hunter’s whistle,” Soyinka said.
Soyinka was reacting to the recent kidnap and killing of some students from Greenfield University, Kaduna state.
He noted that the nation needs to remind itself of hideous precedents of the Chibok and Dapchi student abductions and many others.
According to him, the nation is at war but it continues to pretend that the happenings ‘are mere birth-pangs of a glorious entity’ rather they are ‘death throes’.
“The plague called COVID has met its match on the earth of some nation space once known as Nigeria, I grieve with the bereaved, but mourn even more for our youth so routinely sacrificed, burdened with uncertainty and traumatized beyond youth’s capacity to cope,” he said.
In Northern Nigeria, terrorist groups and bandits alike have been targeting schools and communities; killing and abducting students and other Nigerians.
While the country is yet to recover all the students from its first major student abduction in 2014, other students’ abductions have occurred and the story has not been different.
Apart from the abduction of students, innocent civilians are also being kidnapped, abducted and killed while some villages are being taken over by terrorist groups.
The ICIR has reported that the United States and Canada, had warned and advised their citizens to reconsider travelling to Nigeria as a result of insecurity in some parts of the country.
Stating their reasons, the US in a travel advisory said ‘Violent crime – such as armed robbery, assault, carjacking, kidnapping, hostage-taking, banditry, and rape – is common throughout the country’.
In response to the rising state of insecurity in Nigeria, Buhari had reluctantly let go of the former service chiefs, while decorating the newly appointed ones, he gave them an ultimatum of ‘few weeks’ to make the country secure again, however, the situation persists.
Nigeria is still unsafe. Hundreds of students and residents from various communities have been kidnapped between January and April, according to media reports.
Lukman Abolade is an Investigative reporter with The ICIR. Reach out to him via [email protected], on twitter @AboladeLAA and FB @Correction94