Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, on
Tuesday said the era of denial of President Goodluck Jonathan on the
magnitude of the Boko Haram menace was over.
Soyinka said the President should have
sought international assistance long ago before allowing the situation
to fester and escalate.
He accused the President of failing to heed his earlier warnings and addressing the insurgency “very late and lackadaisically.”
He spoke on Tuesday during a global affairs interview television programme, Amanpour, on Cable News Network, monitored by our correspondent in Lagos.
Soyinka described the video released by
the leader of the sect, Abubakar Shekau, as “gleeful obscenity” and
called on the international community to intervene.
He said, “President Jonathan should have
asked for it (assistance) from the very beginning. I don’t believe in
false pride. The history of the movement to which Boko Haram belongs is
one which is a menace to the entire world.
“This is a government which is not only
in denial mentally but is in denial of certain obvious steps to take. It
is the missing humanity that the problem will go away; an attitude that
occurs in the subconscious.
“But, one thing is certain, the
President and his government cannot sleep easily after what has happened
to Nigeria. The era of denial and indifference has ended. The
situation has now gone beyond the President and the solution must be
internationalised.”
Lamenting the slow response of the
Federal Government to the news of the abduction of the female pupils of
the Government Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State, Soyinka said, the
development was “really agonising.”
“The government of the nation is in
serious trouble. The person who has no excuse is the President of the
nation. I’m calling now not on the nation but on the international
community to take action. This is a global problem and the foothold is
being very deeply entrenched in West Africa,” Soyinka added.
