SAN FRANCISCO, July 15, (THEWILL) – Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka has noted that Nigerians of Igbo extraction have been desperately wronged and “have been brutalised in a way that justifies their feeling that they were not part of the nation”. He then declared that this informed his decision to support the struggle for Biafra.
The revered playwright, who stated that he sometimes disagrees with those who call him a patriot, stated in an interview with Al Jazeera aired on Thursday that: “I don’t agitate on some certain entity called a nation; I agitate on humanity.”
While identifying himself with the agitation for Biafra, he stressed that the Igbo people have been brutalized that they have no choice than to consider opting out of Nigeria.
According to him, “I am very much pro- Biafra because I recognise that the Igbo have been wronged desperately.
“They have been brutalised in a way that justifies their feeling that they were not part of the nation.
“Let me also say this, Biafrans are not entirely innocent in this affair. They were not, but the unleashing of such venom, such devastation on them as a people, was sufficient to justify their decision not to be part of the nation.
“I was pro-Biafran in the sense that I felt that they needed justice.”
The Nobel Laureate criticized the removal of History and teaching of the Biafran crisis in schools, disclosing that “Officials do not want to confront their own history, especially the history in the making of which they feel uncomfortable but, if you do not confront your past, you are going to mess up your future.”
Speaking on the Boko Haram terrorism and the fear that it may lead to the breakup of Nigeria, Soyinka stated that Boko Haram might ironically be part of the reasons Nigeria may stay together.
He stated that he would have agreed that Nigeria would break a few years ago, but now that a section of the country is in trouble, there is some kind of pulling together as the conscience of many Nigerian has been awakened such that they cannot abandon that section of the country.
While urging Nigerians to recognise the plurality of Nigeria, how it came together and begin devising and adopting a method of governance which cannot only be of massive decentralization, Soyinka stressed that “That way, we can stay together. If we continue to have a centralist government, then, Nigeria is on the brink.”
