Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, has criticized President Bola Tinubu for his silence regarding the “tragic” handling of hunger protests by security agencies in various parts of the country. Soyinka argued that the president’s silence effectively encourages the security forces’ actions.
In a statement released on Sunday and signed by Soyinka himself, he expressed deep concern over the government’s approach to managing protests. Soyinka stated, “My primary concern, quite predictably, is the continuing deterioration of the state’s seizure of protest management, an area in which the presidential address fell conspicuously short. Such short-changing of civic deserving, regrettably, goes to arm the security forces in the exercise of impunity and condemns the nation to a seemingly unbreakable cycle of resentment and reprisals.
“Live bullets as state response to civic protest – that becomes the core issue. Even tear gas remains questionable in most circumstances, certainly an abuse in situations of clearly peaceful protest.”
Soyinka emphasized that hunger protests are not unique to Nigeria but are a universal call for urgent government action. He lamented the response to the hunger marches, noting that it marks a regression even worse than the violent culmination of the ENDSARS protests. He stated, “The tragic response to the ongoing hunger marches in parts of the nation, and for which notice was served, constitutes a retrogression that takes the nation even further back than the deadly culmination of the watershed ENDSARS protests.”
Soyinka urged the nation’s security agencies to adopt more civilized methods of managing protests, pointing to examples such as the YELLOW VEST movement in France, where security forces did not resort to lethal means despite confrontations. He concluded by calling for a permanent abandonment of lethal responses by security agencies, reminding them of Nigeria’s own history and the need to break the cycle of violent repression against civic protests.