Soyinka to security agents: Be tactical, tear gas is an abuse during protest

Nobel Laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka has urged security operatives to be tactical in the handling of the ongoing nationwide protest to avoid fatalities.

Soyinka made the call via a statement on Sunday, August 4, 2024, in reaction to President Bola Tinubu’s address to Nigerians.

The famous playwright warned against unprofessional conduct that could hurt protesters “who are merely asking for bread”.

According to him, a hard approach to the nationwide protest could lead to “more desperate upheavals”.

Soyinka added: “Even tear gas remains questionable in most circumstances; using it is certainly an abuse in situations of clearly peaceful protest.

“Hunger marches constitute a universal S.O.S., not peculiar to the Nigerian nation.

Security operatives disperse protesters, journalists with gunshots in Abuja

“They belong, indeed, in a class of their own, never mind the collateral claims emblazoned on posters.

“They serve as summons to governance that a breaking point has been reached and, thus, a testing ground for governance awareness of public desperation.”

Soyinka said the tragic response to the hunger marches in some parts of the country constituted a retrogression that took Nigeria backward.

He stated: “It took us even further back than the deadly culmination of the watershed ‘Endsars’ protests.

“It evokes pre-independence – that is, colonial – acts of disdain, a passage that induced the late stage pioneer Hubert Ogunde’s folk opera ‘Bread and Bullets’, earning that nationalist serial persecution and proscription by the colonial government.”

He further enjoined security agencies to explore alternative models for security intervention, adding that time was long overdue to abandon, permanently, what he called the “anachronistic resort to lethal means”.

President Tinubu had, in a nationwide address, urged protesters to suspend the protest and embrace dialogue.

He said: “Under the circumstances, I enjoin protesters and the organisers to suspend any further protest and create room for dialogue which I have always acceded to, at the slightest opportunity.

“Nigeria requires all hands on deck and needs us all – regardless of age, party, tribe, religion or other divides – to work together in reshaping our destiny as a nation.”

The Star