Wole Soyinka Slams Tinubu’s Speech for Failing to Address Police Brutality Against Protesters

Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, has criticized President Bola Tinubu’s recent nationwide broadcast, asserting that it failed to address the brutal crackdown on #EndBadGovernance protesters by security agencies.

In a statement released, Soyinka highlighted the “tragic response” to ongoing hunger protests, which he said represents a regression to an even darker period than the deadly climax of the watershed #EndSARS protests.

He drew parallels between the current situation and pre-independence colonial practices, criticizing the use of live ammunition and tear gas against peaceful protesters.

“His outline of the government’s remedial action since inception, aimed at warding off just such an outbreak, will undoubtedly receive expert and sustained attention both for effectiveness and in content analysis. 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,” Soyinka stated.

Soyinka argued that Nigeria’s security agencies should be well aware of alternative, more civilized models of security intervention. He pointed to the misuse of force as a core issue, noting that even the use of tear gas canisters is questionable in situations of peaceful protest.

“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 a 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. Hunger marches constitute a universal S.O.S., not peculiar to the Nigerian nation. They belong indeed in a class of their own, never mind the collateral claims emblazoned on posters. They serve as summons to governance that a breaking point has been reached and thus, a testing ground for governance awareness of public desperation,” Soyinka emphasized.

He referenced historical contexts, such as the late pioneer Hubert Ogunde’s folk opera “Bread and Bullets,” which criticized colonial oppression and earned Ogunde persecution from the colonial government. Soyinka suggested that Nigeria’s current approach to protest management mirrors those colonial acts of disdain.

“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. It evokes pre-independence – that is, colonial – acts of disdain, a passage that induced the late stage pioneer Hubert Ogunde’s folk opera BREAD AND BULLETS, earning that nationalist serial persecution and proscription by the colonial government,” he stated.

Soyinka urged the nation’s security agencies to consider alternative models, citing the Yellow Vest movement in France as an example of non-lethal protest management. He warned that using bullets in response to pleas for bread only leads to more desperate upheavals, potentially culminating in revolutions.

“The nation’s security agencies cannot pretend unawareness of alternative models for emulation, civilized advances in security intervention. Need we recall the nationwide 2022/23 editions of what is generally known as the YELLOW VEST movement in France? Perhaps it is time to make such scenarios compulsory viewing in policing curriculum. In all of the coverage that I watched, I did not catch one single instance of a gun leveled at protesters, much less fired at them even during direct physical confrontations. The serving of bullets where bread is pleaded is ominous retrogression, and we know what that eventually proves – a prelude to far more desperate upheavals, not excluding revolutions,” Soyinka declared.

Concluding his statement, Soyinka called for a permanent abandonment of lethal responses by security agencies, emphasizing the need to break the cycle of violence and to recall and learn from Nigeria’s own history.

“The time is long overdue, surely, to abandon, permanently, the anachronistic resort to lethal means by the security agencies of governance. No nation is so under-developed, materially impoverished, or simply internally insecure as to lack the will to set an example. All it takes is to recall its own history, then exercise the will to commence a lasting transformation, inserting a break in the chain of lethal responses against civic society. Today’s marchers may wish to consider adopting the key songs of Hubert Ogunde’s BREAD AND BULLETS, if only to inculcate a sense of shame in the continuing failure to transcend the lure of colonial inheritance where we all were at the receiving end. One way or the other, this vicious cycle must be broken,” Soyinka concluded.