Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka has spoken on the deadly attacks being carried out by Fulani herdsmen around the country.
Soyinka’s comments are contained in an address to the National Conference on Culture and Tourism on Wednesday, April 27, 2016.
Read the full speech below:
Culture
is closely intertwined with tourism – the former, in fact, often drives
the latter. The destination uppermost in the minds of most tourists we
know is – Culture. This means that both share friends and – enemies.
Of
the principal enemies, seeing that we find ourselves within the
precincts of governance, I intend to engage your attention in this brief
address to just one: Insecurity. That inability of any vacationist to
let go completely, relax, submit oneself completely to the offerings of a
new environment – the sounds, sights, smells, textures and taste. Of
Culture itself, in and or out of the touristic intent, there is no
ambiguity in the mind of its enemies.
They make no
bones about their detestation – call them Taliban, Daesh or Isis, al
Shabbab or Boko Haram. Their hatred is pathological and impassioned to a
degree that goes beyond the pale, beyond insanity and sadly beyond
cure. The duty of governance towards such retrogressive outbreaks
remains unambiguous.
After Boko Haram, what next?
In fact, at this moment, Boko Haram has no ‘after’ since it is by no
means ended, no matter what technical expressions such as “militarily
degraded’ means. But let us assume indeed that we are already in the
past of Boko Haram.
It is now clear that the
succession is already decided, the ‘vacated’ space is already conceded,
and that the new territorial aspirants are already securely positioned.
The entire nation appears to be theirs without a struggle, and the
continuity of an established Nigerian necropolis north to south and east
to west is being consolidated.
Some necropoles
are actually architecturally fascinating. They attract visitors from
distant places, but those are works of veneration, artistry and
dedication. They are visual feasts, among whose structures the visitors
actually picnic, leave flowers and symbolic gifts to hovering ancestors.
Latin America is full of them. The Nigerian widening necropoles leave
only the taste of bile in the mouth, the corrosion of hate, stench and
rage.
When I read a short while ago, the
Presidential assurance to this nation that the current homicidal
escalation between the cattle prowlers and farming communities would
soon be over, I felt mortified. He had the solution, he said. Cattle
ranches were being set up, and in another 18 months, rustlings,
destruction of livelihood and killings from herdsmen would be ‘a thing
of the past’.
Eighteen months, he assured the
nation. I believe his Minister of Agriculture echoed that later, but
with a less dispiriting time schema. Neither, however, could be
considered a message of solace and reassurance for the ordinary Nigerian
farmer and the lengthening cast of victims, much less to an intending
tourist to the Forest Retreat of Tinana in the Rivers, the Ikogosi
Springs or the moslem architectural heritage of the ancient city of
Kano. In any case, the external tourists have less hazardous options.
However
there is also internal tourism, to be considered a premium asset – both
economically and in spirit of nation building and personal edification.
This was an exercise I indulged in in the early sixties as by-product
of other engagements, such as research.
A lot
however was simply under curiosity. I can claim, modestly claim to be
among the top twenty-five per cent internally travelled Nigerians,
acquainted with the smells, textures and tastes of their geographical
habitation. I wish the late Segun Olusola were around to testify to the
sudden bouts of tourist explorations we made in his Volkswagen Beetle in
the pre-war sixties.
But now, would the young
adventurous set out to visit the mystery caves of Anambra and its
alleged curative pools from mere interest? They would think twice about
it. It is not merely arbitrary violence that reigns across the nation
but total, undisputed impunity.
Impunity evolves
and becomes integrated in conduct when crime occurs and no legal,
logical and moral response is offered. I have yet to hear this
government articulate a firm policy of non-tolerance for the serial
massacres have become the nation’s identification stamp.
I
have not heard an order given that any cattle herders caught with
sophisticated firearms be instantly disarmed, arrested, placed on trial,
and his cattle confiscated. The nation is treated to an eighteen-month
optimistic plan which, to make matters worse, smacks of abject
appeasement and encouragement of violence on innocents.
Let
me repeat, and of course I only ask to be corrected if wrong: I have
yet to encounter a terse, rigorous, soldierly and uncompromising
language from this leadership, one that threatens a response to this
unconscionable blood-letting that would make even Boko Haram repudiate
its founding clerics.
It is now close to a year
since I attempted to utilize the Open Forum platform of the Centre for
Culture and International Understanding, Oshogbo, to launch a national
debate on the topic – SACRED COWS OR SACRED RIGHTS. The signs were
already clear and the rampage of impunity was already manifesting a
cultic intensity of alarming proportions. For reasons which are too
distasteful to go into here, the forum did not take place.
We
were already agreed that General Buhari be invited to give a keynote
address, based on his long experience in such matters as former head of
state, and as a cattle rearer himself who might be be able to penetrate
the mentality of this ‘post-Boko Haram’ pestilence’. That challenge
remains open, but should now involve this gathering, which surely
includes tourist and educational agencies.
They
should join hands with human rights organisations, the Ministry of
Agriculture, Farming and local Vigilante associations etc. It is a
gauntlet thrown down to be picked up, and urgently, by any of the
affected or troubled sectors of society, or indeed any capable and
interested party at this conference. The CBCIU is prepared to
collaborate.
Let me narrate a personal experience –
just one among many – that was brought home to me, right against my
doorstep. Before that specific happening, I had observed a change of
quality in forest encounters with cattle herdsmen over the years.
These
changes had become sufficiently alarming for me to arrange meetings
with a few governors and, later, with the late National Security Adviser
General Azazi. At the time, we thought that they were Boko Haram,
infiltrating into the south under guise of cattle herding. That was
then, and of course that surmise has never been firmly proven or
disproved.
Recently however, I returned from a
trip outside the country about to find that my home ground had been
invaded, and a brand-new “Appian way” sliced through my sanctuary. That
‘motorable’ path was made by the hoofed invaders. Both the improvised
entry and exit are now blocked, but interested journalists are invited
to visit. In over two decades of living in that ecological preserve, no
such intrusion had ever occurred.
I have no idea
whether they were Fulani or Futa Jalon herdsmen but, they were cattle
herders, and they had cut a crude swathe through my private grounds. I
made enquiries and sent alerts around, including through the Baale of
our neighborhood village. There has been no repeat, and hopefully it
will remain the first and last of such invasion. What it portends
however is for all thinking citizens to reflect upon, and take concerted
measures against.
Herdsmen, let us appreciate,
are perhaps humanity’s earliest known tourists. They must be taught
however that there is a culture of settlement, and learn to seek
accommodation with settled hosts wherever encountered.
The
leadership of any society cannot stand idly and offer solutions that
implicitly deem the massacres of innocents mere incidents on the way to
that learning school. For every crime, there is a punishment, for every
violation, there must be restitution. The nomads of the world cannot
place themselves above the law of settled humanity.
CREDIT: Pulseng
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