Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, yesterday criticized President Jonathan for embarking on a political rally in Kano a little over 24 hours after the Nyanya bomb blast and the abduction of school girls in Chibok in Bornu State.
He said the President’s action came to him as a surprise, and showed that the President was more interested in attending a political rally than tackling the Boko Haram insurgence.
Soyinka said this while speaking at the main opening of the Port Harcourt UNESCO World Book capital. He urged President Jonathan to forget about his re-election campaign for now and focus on tackling the Boko Haram insurgency once and for all.
He said “Permit me to impose on the leadership of this nation a simple straightforward exercise in empathy. I want you to imagine yourself in a hospital ward; one among the over thousand victims of so many origins in Nigeria. You remember that the actual and wounded are not the only casualties.
“On that hospital bed, you find yourself playing host to the high and mighty. “You are immobilised, speechless and incapable of motion, except perhaps to your eyelids.
“Local government chairmen, councillors, ministers, senators and the nation’s President, making promises of free medical treatment and rehabilitation among others, then your spirits are uplifted. You no longer feel depressed and abandoned.
“A few hours after the departure of your August visitors, you see your erstwhile visitors participating in a chieftaincy jollification, just a few hundred miles away.
“Again, a few hours later, the same leadership is at a campaign rally, where the chief custodian of the people’s welfare is complaining that someone allegedly diverted campaign funds to unauthorised use. That national leader then rounds off his outing with a dance that would put Michael Jackson to shame.”
Source: Naijaobserver 