Nigeria Has Been Divided Since 1914, Presidency Replies Soyinka

The presidency has disagreed with Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, on his claim that Nigeria “is divided as never before” under the present administration of President Muhammadu Buhari.

Soyinka had said although he was not in good terms with former president Olusegun Obasanjo, he totally agreed with the ex-president’s recent statement that the country was “badly divided” and was fast becoming a failed state under Buhari.

The poet had said, “…this ripping division has taken place under the policies and conduct of none other than President Buhari,” adding that, “Does anyone deny that it was this president who went to sleep while communities were consistently ravaged by cattle marauders, were raped and displaced in their thousands and turned into beggars all over the landscape? Was it a different president who, on being finally persuaded to visit a scene of carnage, had nothing more authoritative to offer than to advice the traumatised victims to learn to live peacefully with their violators?”

But responding to Soyinka during his appearance on Channels TV’s ‘Politics Today’ on Wednesday, Buhari’s senior media adviser, Femi Adesina, said the country had always been divided since the 1914 amalgamation of the Southern Nigeria protectorate with the Northern protectorate.

According to Adesina, it should be expected that everyone cannot agree with each other in a country of 200 million people.

The presidential aide suggested that the Nobel laureate was playing politics instead of working for the country’s harmony.

Adesina said, “Nigeria had always been divided. Always. Right from amalgamation in 1914, Nigeria has always been divided. Nigeria is an inconvenient amalgamation but we have worked at it and I tell you that there is no time in the history of this country that the country was not divided but then we had kept at it and we were trying to make it work.

“As of 2015, when President Buhari came, Nigeria was terribly, terribly divided; divided along religious lines, divided along ethnic lines; divided along language, divided hopelessly, terribly and that is the division that the President had been working at. But you see that a lot of people instead of letting harmony return to this country, thrive and luxuriate in widening the gulf. They play politics with everything.”