Soyinka urges president to declare 48 hours ultimatum on land-usurpers

Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has urged President Muhammadu Buhari to give a 48-hour deadline order to all land-usurpers to quit forcefully occupied lands.

In a statement yesterday, Soyinka, who expressed the fear that civil war may loom in Nigeria as it happened in Rwanda unless forces are deployed to right the wrongs that have left the ‘nation drowning in blood,’ charged the President to also give order to the military and police that wherever illegal occupiers are found, they should be meted the same treatment as accorded terrorists.

“The plane cannot remain on auto-pilot as hitherto, while the pilot strolls up and down the aisle, assuring passengers that all is well,” he said.

He stated that the government must go beyond arresting a ‘toke of herders’ caught with arms as there are still hundreds of them in the forests.

He said: “Give a nation-wide order to all land-usurpers in the affected towns and villages across the nation to quit those forcefully occupied lands within a 48-hour deadline. Issue orders to the military and police that wherever illegal occupiers are found, they should be meted the same treatment as accorded terrorists.

“It is not enough to back the anti-open grazing laws. Right now, the violated and dispossessed demand restitution, and with no further delay or subterfuge.”

“We simply cannot continue one day longer to endure this forceful feeding of human blood. The plain expression is “ethnic cleansing” and we must not beat around the bush. The shade of Rwanda hangs over the nation.

“Afterwards, we can move into reckoning. This spells meticulous investigation, identifying the high-placed sponsors within this nation, some of who have launched mercenary units to intensify carnage and chaos to stem the stride of nemesis closing in on them for past criminalities, and the cascade of corrupt revelations.

“We shall move into questions, such as: what is a Minister of Defence, who openly justified the homicidal rampage of nomadic herdsmen, still doing in government? And there are other pressing and disturbing questions, some of which are held back for now, simply in order not to impede the pressing imperatives and humane priorities of the current crisis. Right now however, the agenda has to be restitution. Restitution to the displaced, the maimed, the traumatised survivors and the nation’s suppurating psyche.”