Nobel Laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka has expressed his displeasure over President’s Buhari’s reaction to incessant attacks and killings by herdsmen across the country. In an address to the National Conference on Tourism, he stated that he was shocked that the president claim that the attack would soon be over noting that the comments fell short of expectation and did not reassure Nigerians.
“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”. He stated.
Wole Soyinka however stated that herdsmen were perhaps humanity’s earliest known tourists and must be thought about the culture of settlement and learn to seek accommodation with settled hosts wherever encountered. He observed that 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 and for every crime, there is a punishment, for every violation, there must be restitution.