Violence: Soyinka, Achebe, Clarke counsel against reprisals

Three renowned writers, Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, Professor Chinua Achebe and Professor John Bekederemo-Clarke, have warned against retaliation to the killings by the violent Islamic sect, Boko Haram. The writers, in a joint statement on Sunday, urged all persons with various level of influence in the society to douse all possible forms of reprisal attacks. They also urged the Federal Government to convene a national conference to discuss the various challenges confronting the nation. The statement read in part, “BOKO HARAM is very likely celebrating its first tactical victory: provoking retaliation in some parts of the nation. “We insist however that this need not be, and should not be so. And as long as any part, however minuscule, opts for the more difficult path of envisioned forbearance, we are convinced that its responses will find neighbour emulation between homesteads, between towns and villages, between communities on all levels and indeed – states. “This hard, demanding, but profoundly moral and heroic option will be recognised and embraced as the only option for the survival and integrity of the whole. All who claim to be leaders must lead – but in the right direction! “We urge a proactive resolve in all such claimants to leadership. It is not sufficient to make pious pronouncements. All who possess any iota of influence or authority, who aspire to moral leadership must act now to douse the first flickers of ‘responses in kind’ even before they are manifested, and become contagious.”

The writers urged the government to stop assuming that elected legislators were best qualified to address the convocation of a national conference through a piecemeal tinkering approach. According to them the conference should be convened to debate how to promote the nation’s civic and political life as well as the terms of the nation’s “integrated existence.” They said, “Calls have been made in the past – sometimes in response to a crisis within the nation, other times as an objective necessity even in the most tranquil of times – for the convening of a national conference to debate just how the nation should proceed in reinforcing civic and political life, and decide, in full freedom, the terms of her integrated existence. continued