This Government Needs Help – Soyinka

Professor Wole Soyinka has lamented over the rising case of insecurity in the country, stating that many Nigerians go out unsure they would return home safely. 

He stated this, Thursday in Lagos, noting that the country needs help to tame insecurity. 

According to him,“This government needs help, it no longer can cope,” he said.

“It has been going on for years and I don’t know if the citizens of this country should live under such a cloud, such uncertainty: get up in the morning and you don’t know if you would get back at night.”

Soyinka, has blamed the judiciary, impunity, and others issues for contributing to the problem. He said,

“There has been laxity; there has been the encouragement of impunity; there has been compromise even within the judicial so that cases are not solved in time and seem to be solved very objectively,” the literary giant explained.

“There has been, of course, the sieving of money intended for the military to combat insurgency whether of the religious or the secular kind known as banditry.

“So, it is a multi-level situation and it did not begin just now. If we don’t keep stressing that, we would never get to the root of the problem.”

Speaking further, the Nobel Laureate blasted politicians in the two major political parties in Nigeria – the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) over the wave of defections. He said their action does not put the country’s democracy in a positive light. 

Soyinka equally said Nigerian youths’ do not want to take up leadership positions in the political space.“The youths of this nation don’t seem to want to take their destiny into their own hands,” he said.

He recalled that in the 2019 election, he was part of the move for youths to present a consensus candidate which did not materialise.

“Well, they failed to do that and I have a fear that this same thing will happen this year,” he reported.