Nigeria Must Decentralise Now or Risk Disintegration, Soyinka Warns

•Urges Buhari not to bully secessionists, forget open grazing

James Emejo, Emmanuel Addeh, Adedayo Akinwale in Abuja and Mary Nnah in Lagos

A Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, yesterday stated that Nigeria cannot remain one country if it fails to decentralise as fast as possible, adding that analysts, retired generals and others have maintained the same position.

Soyinka spoke to ARISE NEWS Channel, the broadcast arm of THISDAY Newspapers, urging President Muhammadu Buhari to be more sensitive to the agitations of secessionists rather than bully them.

“If it (Nigeria) fails to decentralise, some people use the word reconstruction, some use whatever. But if Nigeria fails to decentralise as fast as possible, manifestly, not as rhetoric, then Nigeria cannot stay together,” he warned, adding: “Again, it’s not Wole Soyinka saying this. Everybody has said it; generals have said it; ex-heads of state have said it; politicians have said it; analysts have said it; economists have said it. And that’s what’s happening to people in the streets. That’s why they are moving; that’s why they are demonstrating; that’s why they are defying threats from the police and from the government that if you demonstrate, you are traitors or you do this, we’ll deal with you.”

Soyinka explained that people are no longer intimidated by Buhari’s threat that ‘we will talk to you in the only way you understand.’

“It doesn’t wash with anybody any longer because if a nation is on a suicidal slide, the people who feel that they do not deserve that kind of suicidal plunge have a right to say ‘sorry, I am getting off before it nosedives,” he said.

On how to make the system work again, he said: “It relates to what I was saying earlier. It is because he (Buhari) is not listening or he’s listening and he’s not understanding so that we do not have this extreme moment to say, wait a minute, there is nobody out there, we better look after our own security, we better look after our own very existence.”

He accused governors and senators of not doing enough to confront the challenges facing the country.
He said while the Senate has not utilised its powers to force the government to act the way it should, the governors appeared to be too timid to act.

Soyinka added that Buhari is not listening to the yearnings of Nigerians, and his administration did not really understand the applications, full responsibilities and commitments involved in a democratic regime.
He said he was alarmed at the understanding of democracy by the top hierarchy of government.

He stated that the suspension of Twitter’s operations in Nigeria aborted the various channels of self-expression open to any kind of polity and abrogated the essence of democracy.

He said: “The politicians are not doing enough, especially the Senate. If you study the constitution very carefully, you will find out that they have certain powers which they haven’t touched. I have discussed this with constitutional lawyers. There are certain areas in which they can act, they can force this government, compel this government to act the way it should.

“And that also applies especially to governors. The governors themselves are too tentative; they are too timid. There are certain areas of the constitution, in which, as I go back to my favourite expression, they can push the envelope, completely, so that we get a sense of governance at all tiers, and have synergy going on. I think people are ready to stand behind the leaders.”

Soyinka said Twitter’s suspension showed that democracy means different things to different people.
He also condemned the language used by Buhari in his interview recently and even in his statements from Aso Rock in relation to those who are clamouring for secession.

According to him, when a group makes such agitations, any sensitive leadership must learn to understand this and respond to the reasons behind those agitations and not start threatening and bullying and trying to intimidate people because they are giving vent to deep-seated grievances.

He added: “For instance, there was a question I listened to President Buhari on this very channel (ARISE) about the position of the various governors on open grazing. At least 50 per cent of the nation has their representatives, saying that within the constitution, within the democratic dispensation that we say we are operating- we are saying on behalf of our people that we do not want open grazing anymore. And then somebody sits in Aso Rock and says to them that well, there is a cattle constitution, I am instructing my attorney-general to dig up some kind of law, colonial law which arbitrated between farmers and herders…so that I can recover on behalf of a certain private business, the whole routes – which means that he is not listening to what people are saying, he’s not listening to what the governors representing them are saying.

“He’s saying I am going to restore the routes by referring to some colonial arrangements. Now, when I listen to a thing like that I really despair. I want to say this, it was a very instructive interview, and no doubt there was nothing new. One was just hoping that this government had transcended that kind of partisan thinking.”