National Protest: Wole Soyinka Faults Tinubu’s Speech

Voice Air Media, News Update

Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka has rebuked President Bola Tinubu’s Sunday broadcast for failing to address police and SSS deployment of lethal force to quell #EndHunger demonstrations, which began on August 1 and are scheduled to last 10 days.

Mr Soyinka, 90, a longtime ally of the president, said Mr Tinubu’s neglect to address the matter in his minutes-long broadcast could be seen as endorsing and empowering security agencies to continue toeing the path of impunity.

“My primary concern, quite predictably, is the continuing deterioration of the state’s seizure of protest management, an area in which the presidential address fell conspicuously short,” the celebrated literature icon said in a statement on Sunday. “Such short-changing of civic deserving, regrettably, goes to arm the security forces in the exercise of impunity and condemns the nation to a seemingly unbreakable cycle of resentment and reprisals.”

Mr Soyinka condemned the use of live rounds to disperse protesters, noting that the protest itself was not unique to Nigeria alone, recounting how similar natuonwide protests took place in France as recently as 2022 and 2023.

“Live bullets as state response to civic protest—that becomes the core issue. Even tear gas remains questionable in most circumstances, certainly an abuse in situations of clearly peaceful protest. Hunger marches constitute a universal SOS, not peculiar to the Nigerian nation,” wrote the nonagenarian.

Police and SSS operatives fired live ammunition at journalists hanging around the Moshood Abiola National Stadium Abuja to cover the protests shortly after noon on Saturday.

The rear windshield of a Toyota Sienna vehicle conveying reporters from The Punch and Cable was shattered into smithereens after getting shot by the agents.

Mr Soyinka said the nation was long overdue “to abandon, permanently, the anachronistic resort to lethal means by the security agencies of governance.”

Firing live bullets at peaceful protesters who bemoaned hunger in the land, according to Mr Soyinka, symbolises an “ominous retrogression,” the kind that precedes “upheavals” and most likely “revolutions.”

“The serving of bullets where bread is pleaded is ominous retrogression, and we know what that eventually proves—a prelude to far more desperate upheavals, not excluding revolutions,” Mr Soyinka warned.

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