Wole Soyinka’s Comment On Boko Haram Dialogue With FG: Don’t Talk To Mass Murderers

Professor Wole Soyinka, Nigerian Nobel
literature laureate said Friday that trying to end
a deadly insurgency by Islamist extremist group
Boko Haram through dialogue would amount to
“abysmal appeasement.”
His position contradicted the policy stance of
President Goodluck Jonathan whose government
has confirmed that “back-channel” talks with the
group are ongoing.
“When I say, ‘don’t talk to murderers,’ that is
exactly what I mean,” Soyinka told foreign media
at an international conference in Lagos.
“Don’t talk to mass murderers. Don’t talk to
those who have made the killing of innocent
people their philosophy,” he added.
Soyinka described the violence blamed on the
Islamists, which has included attacks on security
forces, government officials and Christians in
church, as “completely out of control.”
“Then you, the assaulted, say, ‘please, come and
talk to us. Please, we don’t know what you want’
… What kind of language is that? That is the
language of abysmal appeasement,” he said on
the sidelines of the Kuramo Conference on
development.
Nigerian security forces have so far been been
unable to stamp out the violence and have
themselves been accused of massive abuses in
combatting the Islamists.Amnesty International has
charged the military with carrying out summary
executions, particularly in the northeast where Boko
Haram is based, and Human Rights Watch has said
the military could be guilty of crimes against
humanity in combatting the group.
“There has been the condemnable scorched
earth policy of the military,” Soyinka said,
adding that he believed that such killings had
occurred.
Africa’s first Nobel literature prize winner
however described the insurgency as a “security
issue” that posed a new kind of challenge for
Nigeria’s military.Violence linked to Boko Haram
is estimated to have claimed 2,800 lives since
2009, including killings by the security forces,
with the worst violence concentrated in the
mainly Muslim north of Africa’s most populous
country.The group has said it wants to create an
Islamic state in the north, but its demands have
continuously shifted.