By ‘Dotun Akintomide
Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, Thursday, advised the Federal Government to seek international assistance to curb the menace of killings being perpetrated by suspected Fulani herdsmen nationwide.
He urged the Federal Government to put aside pride and integrity by seeking international help if it could not cope with the challenges being faced by the country.
“I don’t believe in false pride. If the government cannot cope, it should not shy away from asking for international help,” Soyinka said.
Soyinka also stated that ethnic cleansing and political desperation were responsible for killings by suspected Fulani herdsmen.
He disclosed this while on a courtesy visit to Governor Samuel Ortom at the Benue Peoples House in Makurdi on Thursday.
The governor had also told Soyinka that a group of persons were ambushed by herdsmen while they were returning from the burial of the two priests and other parishioners on Tuesday on Naka road.
The Nobel Laureate who was in the state to attend the 35th anniversary of Senator Suemo Chia’s novel, ‘Adan Wade Kohol Ga’, a novel written in Tiv, also attributed the killings in the state to desperate politicians that were bent on perpetuating themselves in office.
He also took a swipe the President Muhammadu Buhari administration to the cleaners when he said there were no thinking people among the government.
According to him, they would have been able to decipher where the attacks were coming from and who was responsible.
He said: “If the government cannot cope, it should not shy away from asking for international help.
“With those few words, I wish to bring to you the solidarity of our people, our profession, and reemphasise the fact that an injury at the other end of the nation is an injury committed on the opposite side, no matter how distant.
“I don’t believe in false pride. If the government cannot cope, it should not shy away from asking for international help. When human lives are concerned in their thousands and so on, as it was observed everywhere all over the world, if these complements will be returned, and for those nations where our military has served before to come to our assistance, I think there should be no business of national integrity, national pride, and so on.
“People are dying; so, if this government cannot cope. Please, just ask for international help and I know they are ready and willing to come to our aid,” he stated.
Soyinka who said the killings may be outright ethnic cleansing and a plot by desperate politicians who wish to remain in office for the sake of immunity.
He said: “My feeling, by the way is that, for instance, the recent killing of the priests and the congregation, is that it was a deliberate diversion.
“I think this is just a campaign of ethnic cleansing for the purpose of occupation of land, that is one.
“Two, our feelings are that some really desperate politicians who are sponsoring these mercenaries in order to create chaos in advance of the next election because they are desperate to stay in power and continue to enjoy immunity.
“I think that approach, that concern, should also be a possibility in the minds of all of us because the ferocity, the suddenness and the organisational aspect of this invasion is just too suspect.
“These are not sporadic attacks. They are coordinated and I think if we have really thinking people around the government by now it should have been possible, at least, to identify some of those who are sponsoring these killings.”
He noted that the challenge with Nigeria is the inability to identify the root cause of issues and tackle them.
Soyinka continued: “The trouble with not calling things by their proper names and at the right time is what leads communities, nations, and people generally to start treating a malignant tumour with Vaseline.
“Just like refusal to recognise, and at the critical moment, the nature of a particular problem that has been at the basis of the massacres going on in this region, especially Benue State.
“There’s no any other word for it. Let’s not play around with the euphemisms. It’s no other word but ethnic cleansing.
“There’s no other definition for what has been going on here. And it’s very sad to me personally to see that a nation like Nigeria, with so much human talent, has failed to learn the lesson of the history of places like Rwanda.
“I happen to have been very much involved in the Rwandan situation vicariously.
“The phenomenon of human beings rising against one another and butchering innocents in their hundreds and thousands has always been something of a mystery to me.
“As some of you know, one of my favourite hobbies is hunting. You hunt animals for food, but why do you hunt human beings? Why should an organised force descend on sleeping villages and mow them down, men, women, the old and children? What’s the motivation?”
He continued: “Now, from time to time, we hear explanations like these are Libyan mercenaries on the loose, yes but who brought them here? Who shelters them? Who supports them? Who sponsors them, and why?
“You kill human beings very often because you want their land; so, that is at least somewhere to begin with to see what’s the motivation.
“And that is why I threw that challenge to the president. I said why don’t you give those who are occupying land that does not belong to them 48 hours’ notice to get out of there?
“And then those whom you find still in those villages where the proper indigenous occupants have been ousted, then you speak to them in the language which they understand.”
Responding, Governor Samuel Ortom said security agencies had disarmed the people even of their cutlasses, which has left them at the mercy of the mercenaries.
He pointed out that even Dane guns and guns that were legally licensed had been collected from the people.
