LAGOS/Nigeria: Professor Wole Soyinka recently lent his voice to the support for restructuring saying that the nation is “long overdue for restructuring”. He made this statement on Monday in Lagos after a press briefing to unveil the batch of students travelling to Lebanon for studies. The programme is organized by The Cedar Institute in Lebanon, in collaboration with The Wole Soyinka Foundation. Soyinka added that the proponents of restructuring should not be put off by those saying it is the mind of Nigerians that need to be restructured not the nation itself.
He said “I find it very dishonest and cheap time-serving, trivializing the issue when I hear expressions like ‘it is the mind that needs to be restructured’. Who is arguing or denying that? Why bring it up? Why is it a substitute?. We are talking of decentralization. That is another word. This country is over-centralised”. He further said “Are you saying we cannot reconstruct the mind and reconstruct the nation at the same time? Call it by whatever name. We are saying that this nation is long overdue for reconfiguring. That is the expression I choose to use now”.
Soyinka also added that the level of security in the country is one of the major reason behind the clamour for state and community policing. He said “take simple security for instance. The average citizen feels less secure now than he did a few years ago; that is evident. When people talk about state police, there are reasons for it”. “when they talk about bringing policing right down to the community level, they know what they are talking about. This is also part and parcel of reconstruction”.
When asked about his views on the economic state of the nation, Soyinka also said there are “yawning gaps” in the current administration adding that the past few years have been that of “economic disaster” for the average Nigerian. Soyinka however said there was a question of who was responsible for the sufferings the nation was plunged in the last two years. “The economy, there is a big question about it right now. Fortunately, everybody admits that we went through a bad patch. Right now, it is a question of have we come out of it or not or there is no question at all.
