Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka said bandits that kidnapped hundreds of school students at Government Science Secondary School (GSSS), Kankara in Katsina State gave President Muhammadu Buhari a slap across the face on his home terrain.
He said this Monday in a statement titled, “Infradig – A presidential comeuppance”.
The octogenarian berated the president for shunning the National Assembly’s invitation to address the legislature on the worrisome state of security in the country.
Soyinka said that the president showed disdain towards the National Assembly with his response to the invitation.
He said the president acted as if it was beneath the dignity of a Commander-in-Chief to address the National Assembly
According to him, the president’s change of heart after initially agreeing to honour the invitation showed that he is not in charge of the country.
“He responded to the polite invitation to rub minds urgently over a people’s security anxieties as one who still struggled to preserve the tattered remains of his ‘Born-Again’ democratic camouflage.
“However, his reversal of consent raised yet again the frightening situation report have fervently posed: Buhari is not in charge. Whoever is, that segment of the cabalistic control obviously cornered him on the way to the lawmakers’ chambers.”
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Soyinka added, “The opportunistic homicidal respondents – Bandits/Boko Haram or whoever – thereupon picked up the gauntlet and provided a response in their own language: abduction once again of the nation’s children.
“They handed him a slap across the face, on his home terrain, taunting: See if that is more suited to your dignity.
“If only this latest outrage were a personal contest of slights between insurgency and power – alas, its resonance is felt far beyond! It is merely the latest in the serial stinging slaps across the face of the nation, and it draws blood from every sensing citizen.
“Over five years since Chibok, we have yet to anticipate and to guard against a repeat.
“We continue to hand over innocent wards cheaply, en masse, to the agents of darkness and despair.
“A government refuses to accept that, as indicated several times over, the nation is at war. At war within itself, and that it requires drastic measures, away from spasmodic responses after the dread deed, if there is any will left over to salvage what is left of nationhood.”