Wole Soyinka has lamented the rising level of insecurity in the country, saying many Nigerians go out unsure they would return home safely. He believes the country needs help to tame insecurity.
The Nobel laureate spoke on the sidelines of a media briefing held in Lagos on Thursday.
“This government needs help, it no longer can cope,” he said.
“It has been going on for years and I don’t know if the citizens of this country should live under such a cloud, such uncertainty: get up in the morning and you don’t know if you would get back at night.”
Soyinka, who noted that the problem has been lingering for a while, blamed the judiciary, impunity, and others issues for contributing to the problem.
“There has been laxity; there has been the encouragement of impunity; there has been compromise even within the judicial so that cases are not solved in time and seem to be solved very objectively,” the literary giant explained.
“There has been, of course, the sieving of money intended for the military to combat insurgency whether of the religious or the secular kind known as banditry.
“So, it is a multi-level situation and it did not begin just now. If we don’t keep stressing that, we would never get to the root of the problem.”
He also berated the main political parties in Nigeria – the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) over the wave of defections.
According to him, such development does not augur well for the country’s democracy. Soyinka equally lamented the youths’ inability to take up leadership positions in the political space.
“The youths of this nation don’t seem to want to take their destiny into their own hands,” he said.
While recalling that he was part of the move for youths to present a consensus candidate during the 2019 election, he lamented that such did not materialise.
“Well, they failed to do that and I have a fear that this same thing will happen this year,” the revered poet explained.