Wole Soyinka has expressed sadness at the government's 'I-don't-care-attitude as Fulani herdsmen go on rampage killing and murdering people across the federation.
Prof. Wole Soyinka
Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, has expressed shock over President Muhammadu Buhari's silence as Fulani herdsmen murder and massacre other Nigerians across the country.
He was speaking at the National Conference on Culture and Tourism, on Wednesday. Soyinka said regretted why the government is yet to provide an articulate plan to tackle the menace.
“I have yet to hear this government articulate a firm policy of non-tolerance for the serial massacres that have become the nation’s identification stamp.
“I have not heard an order given that any cattle herders caught with sophisticated firearms be instantly disarmed, arrested, placed on trial, and his cattle confiscated. The nation is treated to an eighteen-month optimistic plan which, to make matters worse, smacks of abject appeasement and encouragement of violence on innocents.
“When I read a short while ago, the Presidential assurance to this nation that the current homicidal escalation between the cattle prowlers and farming communities would soon be over, I felt mortified,” Soyinka said.
He decried government's approach to this disturbing issue saying: “He had the solution, he said. Cattle ranches were being set up, and in another 18 months, rustlings, destruction of livelihood and killings from herdsmen would be ‘a thing of the past’. 18 months, he assured the nation. I believe his Minister of Agriculture echoed that later, but with a less dispiriting time schema."