Nigerian playwright, Poet and Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, has disclosed how President Muhammadu Buhari is the cause of the continuous killings in Benue State and around Nigeria.
Soyinka said this when he paid a courtesy visit to the Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom on Thursday.
After meeting with the governor in Makurdi, Soyinka told reporters that Buhari’s failure to take action after the very first strike by the Fulani herdsmen had made the killings to continue without resistance.
According to him, “The critical moment by the way has been lost. The critical moment when this act of impunity, this rampage of impunity could have been stopped if the President of this nation had gone to the site of the first atrocity and said this would not be tolerated and I want this place sanitized by the military, it would not have had this succession of killings which have even been given from time to time religious overtones.”
“My feeling by the way about the recent killing of the Priests and the congregation is that it was a deliberate diversion. I think this is just a campaign of ethnic cleansing for the purpose of occupation of land, that is one.
“Two, our feelings are that some really desperate politicians are sponsoring these mercenaries in
order to create chaos in advance of the next election because they are desperate to stay in power and continue to enjoy immunity.”
Soyinka pointed out that the lack of right thinking people around the corridors of power of the federal government, has prolonged the killings rocking states and called on everyone to come and really probe the menace.
“I think it’s time for all of us to come together and really probe this tumour and stop pretending that this is simply ringworm when we are actuality dealing with cancer in this society.”