Presidency Reacts To Soyinka’s Comments, Insists Security Not Failing

The Presidency has reacted to comments made by Professor Wole Soyinka in which called on Nigerians to defend themselves in the heat of prevailing security challenges.

Speaking about the call during his appearance on Politics Today, the Special Adviser to the President on Media and Publicity, Mr Femi Adesina, noted that the Federal Government would review the suggestion from the Nobel Laureate.

“What Professor Soyinka has said can just be one of the proffered solutions which will be looked out,” he said on Tuesday. “I have spoken about the nine governors’ committee headed by Professor (Yemi) Osinbajo who is the Vice President of the country.”

Adesina said this a few hours after Professor Soyinka decried the spate of killings in parts of the country.

The revered scholar had told journalists in Lagos that the phenomenon of herdsmen and farmers clashes was not new, but an issue that has graduated to an alarming state in the last eight years.

He then called for an organised resistance to the menace, describing the herdsmen as a new breed of Boko Haram and internal colonialists.

Reacting to some of the issues raised by the Nobel Laureate, Adesina refuted claims that the security apparatus was in a near comatose, insisting that the security agencies were rising up to the challenges.

According to him, the issue of herdsmen and farmers crisis is a national emergency that “determines to be interrogated from different sides.”

“There is a security apparatus in the country which is working to secure the country,” Adesina insisted.

“Yes, there are challenges, but that apparatus is rising to those challenges. I would not agree with you that it is failing.”

The administration of President Muhammadu Buhari has come under severe criticisms in recent times over Nigeria’s security among other issues.

The President was also accused by some people of not being sensitive to the killings that have led to the death of many innocent Nigerians since the beginning of the year.

In his reaction, President Buhari said it would be dishonest to say he was enjoying himself and not doing anything to stop the killings.