By our reporters| Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, has revealed how he alerted a former National Security Adviser on the potential threat posed by the influx of strange nomadic herders into Nigeria forests.
Soyinka who made the disclosure in his recent public comments, also carpeted President Muhammadu Buhari over his controversial comment to ‘shock’ those killing security officers in South eastern part of the country and burning government facilities.
The renowned playwright while commenting on prevailing security challenges occasioned by incessant killings, kidnappings, and alarming farmers-herders clashes in the country,, recalled how he warned a national security adviser at a meeting in London ten years ago about the presence of ‘strange’ nomadic herders infiltrating the country.
Eventhough, he did not mention any name in his statement, but Owoeye Azazi and Sambo Dasuki served as NSAs during the tenure of former president, Goodluck Jonathan.
According to Soyinka, “it took him months to agree to meet the ex-official in the United Kingdom”.
“It took that long only because I refused to meet him within the country, since it had become clear that the security forces, in addition to high levels of governance, had become infiltrated by the very vicious elements that have fully established and sustained a lethal dimension. I was not about to let myself be “sold out” to unseen forces in my eagerness to sound an oppressive warning, Soyinka said.
“We eventually met in London. The records, I am certain, will be found in the National Security files and, in any case, I went accompanied.”
The Nobel laureate said his mission was to “let him (ex-NSA) know that the nation was under siege and that the nomadic herdsmen that then threaded the forests were of a different breed from those whom we normally encountered in that environment that was also close to second home to some of us.”
“The military general assured him that the military was aware of it”, Soyinka said.
“That National Security Adviser assured me that the military was aware of this, and that his mission to the United States was to negotiate the purchase of spotter planes to patrol the forest routes. I retreated, satisfied, to my normal preoccupations.
“No, not entirely true – I did take other supplementary steps internally, including meetings with high level state officials in the West.”
He, however, lamented that “the same official was later accused of diverting resources meant to equip the military”.
“Now comes the rub! Imagine the chagrin, this past week or two, as revelations emerged, ten years after that meeting, of humongous amounts from oil resources being found in the US off-shore accounts of that pivotal figure of any nation’s security architecture! Is that an exceptional tale?
Commenting on President Buhari’s threat to teach those formenting trouble in the South East some lessons, Soyinka said the president should be called to order.
He said, “When, however, a Head of State threatens to “shock” civilian dissidents, to “deal with them in the language they understand”, and in a context that conveniently brackets opposition to governance with any bloodthirsting enemies of state, we have to call attention to the precedent language of such a national leader under even more provocative, nation disintegrative circumstances.
“What a pity, and what a tragic setting, to discover that this language was accessible all the time to President Buhari, where and when it truly mattered, when it would have been not only appropriate, but deserved and mandatory!”
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