Elder statesman and Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka on Tuesday added his voice to the growing concern about the federal government’s proposed Ruga settlement initiative as he warned that the scheme could spell doom for the country if not well handled.
According to Soyinka, Ruga is not the best approach to resolving the herders-farmers crisis which has claimed many lives and destroyed property worth hundreds of millions of naira.
The Nobel laureate who spoke at launch of United Nations Solutions 17 SDG programme in Lagos, said Buhari ought to have lost the presidential election given the way he handled the farmers-herders crisis.
He said, “Ruga is going to be an explosion if not handled with care. But why do we not take our policies from good models?.”
“This is not the way people and countries deal with issues of cattle. I travel everywhere. It has to be handled in a way that is logical, comprehensible to the environment. When a cow walks up to the window of my house in Abeokuta, a house which is located in a residential area, then there’s a problem.
“When a cow goes to Ijebu Ode and eat up their plant seedlings and so on and you expect people to be quiet? People have been killed in hundreds just because of the failure of leadership at a critical time.
“And the cattle herders have been given a sense of impunity. They kill without any compunction, they drive away the farmers who have been contributing to the food solutions in the country, the cattle eat their crops and then you come up with Ruga.
“I think that there is going to be trouble in this country if this Ruga thing is not handled imaginatively and with humanity as priority. Any country where cattle takes priority over human life is definitely at an elementary stage.”
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