Nobel Laureate Prof Wole Soyinka has suggested that Nigeria should consider breaking up if it helps solve the country’s challenges.
Speaking at the PUNCH Newspapers’ 50th-anniversary lecture in Lagos on Thursday, Soyinka emphasized the need for decentralization to bring governance closer to the people, stating that leaders should stop taking Nigerians for granted.
Soyinka, who delivered a lecture titled ‘Recovering the Narrative,’ expressed support for decentralization, using terms like “reconfiguration” instead of restructuring.
He highlighted the fear of collapse and breakup as excuses several regimes gave, urging leaders to address the issue head-on.
The Nobel laureate pointed out that while politicians understand the importance of restructuring when out of power, they change their stance once in office.
He emphasized the need for leaders to recognize the necessity and inevitability of decentralization to address issues such as security and bring productivity closer to the citizens.
His words: “I know the fear. The fear is collapse, break up. That’s been the excuse given by several regimes. But suppose the nation is breaking up informally, in other words, as a fact rather than as a theory. Then, and you better just address this.
“Come straight on and see exactly what happened. What is wrong with general representatives seeing them and saying this is the protocol of our association, anything outside of it?
“Anyone who does not want to accept these protocols, abide by these protocols and manifest these protocols in the act should take a walk. I have no problem at all.
“We live in what is known as the nation, beginning as a vast football field and ending up as a ping pong table. If that is going to restore dignity to citizens.
“If that is going to guarantee three square meals a day, then so be it. One of my favourite expressions with people is, “Let nations die, that humanity may live.”
Presently the north doesn’t need break up of the country because of oil money from south. Meanwhile the north are using Boko Haram to gaurd and mine the huge solid mineral deposits in sambisa forest. Their bandits are in charge of solid mineral deposits in zamfara, niger etc. when the oil from south dries up or finished the north will consider restructuring or break up. By that time north will be fully in charge of all solid mineral deposits in their area having been illegally tapping them using Boko Haram and bandits. By that time the south becomes the looser because the oil money is no more
Why can’t our leaders be consistent with their positions on national issues? Why should they blow hot and cold at the same time? This problem had been there before President Tinubu was brought in to continue the police he had been part of as a party man during the Buhari regime. Concerned citizens of the country who had seen through the eye of a needle that nothing different would be made by the present administration warned Prof Wole Soyinka against his support for what they termed a mere extension of the old order but he neglected their concerns and started gunning for restructuring or breakup barely eight months to Tinubu regime.
Now, taking from his words, “Let nations die, that humanity may live”, the Nigeria nation is profusely bleeding and if the bleeding is not urgently stopped, it might be the end of a nation that was once swimming in affluence, to the extent that one of the rulers openly complained of how to spend the money in the country as the kind of money Nigeria was making was unimaginable to his ignorant mind. Professor Soyinka has spoken well anyway, irrespective of when he’s resuming the call that once endeared him to the heart of the Southerners. It is now left for the government to do the needful.
Let the country break up now; without further delay. Every ñew nation will work to sustain itself and their will be no more parasitic existence. The nation that doesn’t work will starve.
If people in Nigeria cannot live together then the best is to break up, you need people working together to build a nation. From all indication different ethnic group in Nigeria have their different aspirations ,etc
I completely support breaking this country to allow nations determine their fate.