Soyinka advises Buhari on Boko Haram, insecurity

Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka yesterday tasked President Muhammadu Buhari to expedite more action to end pervasive insecurity in the country occasioned by the outlawed Boko Haram sect.

Watch And Pray, Watch And Prey By Wole Soyinka

Soyinka, who made this disclosure during a lecture delivered at the third convocation ceremony of the Kwara State University, (KWASU) Malete, also warned that the temple of learning may soon be eroded in the country.

According to him, “Nigerians should not see the sufferings, brutality and terror and insurgency being witnessed by some states in the northern parts of the country as their problems alone”.

He expressed fear that looking at insurgency as problem of a section of the country could cause spread of the hazards, adding that no fresh approach had been involved in the fight against the menace by the new administration and thus no difference witnessed so far.

He also emphasised that the temple of learning must be protected irrespective of gender or religion, saying, “no woman, no nation”.

Soyinka, in a lecture titled, ‘Science and Imagination in Temple of Knowledge’, asked rhetorically, “can science and religion co-exist?”, and described members of the Boko Haram sect as enemies of sound knowledge.

He said members of Boko Haram are not actually without any knowledge, since they knew the science of making bomb and killing people, adding that they had failed to acquire knowledge on human co-existence.

He also decried agony, humiliation and trauma of the abducted Chibok girls in the hands of their captors, as they embarked on their secondary school qualifying examination, saying that he was always sad whenever he relived the imagination of experience the girls would be going through, described the situation as irony.

Also speaking, the Chancellor of the university, Prof. Ibrahim Agboola Gambari, warned that education sector in the country was in dire straits, due to constraints of funds.

“Basic infrastructural, teaching and learning facilities are pathetically lacking in most areas of academic pursuits in our universities which has painfully led to the ‘half-baked graduates’ syndrome”, he said.

Soyinka advises Buhari on Boko Haram, insecurity