Nigerian playwright, Wole Soyinka has said he agrees with the claim of former President Olusegun Obasanjo that Nigeria is divided as never before under the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.
Soyinka said this in a statement titled, “Between dividers-in-chief and dividers-in-law” on Tuesday.
According to him, the Buhari Government has refused to listen to the counsel of well-meaning Nigerians.
He said partly, “I am notoriously no fan of Olusegun Obasanjo, General, twice former president and co-architect with other past leaders of the crumbling edifice that is still generously called Nigeria. I have no reasons to change my stance on his record. Nonetheless, I embrace the responsibility of calling attention to any accurate reading of this nation from whatever source, as a contraption teetering on the very edge of total collapse,” he said.
“We are close to extinction as a viable comity of peoples, supposedly bound together under an equitable set of protocols of co-habitation, capable of producing its own means of existence, and devoid of a culture of sectarian privilege and will to dominate.
“The nation is divided as never before, and this ripping division has taken place under the policies and conduct of none other than President Buhari – does that claim belong in the realms of speculation?
“Does anyone deny that it was this president who went to sleep while communities were consistently ravaged by cattle marauders, were raped and displaced in their thousands and turned into beggars all over the landscape? Was it a different president who, on being finally persuaded to visit a scene of carnage, had nothing more authoritative to offer than to advice the traumatised victims to learn to live peacefully with their violators?
It can be recalled that the Presidency in a statement issued by Buhari’s spokesman, Garba Shehu, described Obasanjo as “divider-in-chief” of Nigeria.
This is while reacting to a comment made by the former Nigerian president that Nigeria is “fast drifting to a failed and badly divided state” under Buhari.
