Kankara kidnap: Buhari not in charge, says Soyinka

Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka on Monday condemned the abduction of school children in Katsina State, calling on President Muhammadu Buhari to urgently put machinery in motion to overhaul the nation’s structural existence.

Soyinka, in a statement, titled: “INFRADIG – A Presidential Comeuppance,” lamented that the latest kidnap is yet another slap in the face of the nation.

According to him, Nigeria is currently at war within himself requiring drastic measures.

He said, “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.

“What is tragically demonstrated daily in all departments of citizen survival is the need to overhaul the nation’s structural existence – beginning, obviously, with the imperative of guaranteeing that very existence.”

Soyinka reiterated his stance that Buhari is not in charge.

He said, “He did not consider it infradig at the beginning.. 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 I 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 and urged : Don’t! Their invitation is infradig! He succumbed.

“Beneath the dignity of a Commander-in-Chief! Well. 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.