Wole Soyinka: Act tough on terrorists

Celebrated Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka has called on Africans and all humanity to come together and fight terrorism as one. The writer urged all mankind to turn around and use the same philosophy of fundamentalism used by terrorists across the world to counter their activities.

He posited that this would offer the much-needed impetus to put to a stop to the heinous acts by people who hide behind religion to take away innocent lives.

“Don’t you think it is high time we used fundamentalism to protect humanity?” he posed to a full house at the ongoing Storymoja Festival at the Nairobi National Museums.

In a paper titled, Parable from Wangari Maathai’s Trees, the world-renowned writer called on Africans to unite and fight terrorism, noting that a tree does not make a forest. “What becomes of our duty when one or more of us are unjustly felled?” he asked.

Speaking at the festival over the weekend, Soyinka (pictured) mourned Ghanaian poet and author Kofi Awoonor who met his death last year in the Westgate Mall attack. Prof Awoonor had come to Nairobi to deliver a keynote address at the Storymoja Festival when he died in the raid.

Soyinka observed that the emerging terrorists, including Boko Haram in his home country, present a complex problem that must be tackled by a leadership that is ready to deal with issues that are at the hearts of the people.

“My dear colleagues, friends, fellow earth inhabitants, it is time we stopped beating about the bush or abasing language into a mere palliative, least of all by those of us who live without direct daily contact with the effect of this inhuman aberration,” he said.

He said that writers do not preach violence but that there is always an exception when they consider violence as the last recourse of failed humanity. “Writers understand that the Tree of Liberty provides the roof under which we shelter in the forest of creativity. We have a profound call to arrest and neutralise any hand that is raised to cut it down – no matter what label is embossed on the rampaging axe – that of secular ideology, or religion,” he said.

The writer asked people not to hide behind historical injustices to justify sorry states or mayhem meted by terrorists today.