Wole Soyinka |
Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka on Saturday said there is something rotten in Nigeria following persistent fuel crisis and the failure of those in authorities who are supposed to remedy the situation. Soyinka, in a statement lamented that Nigerians were being frustrated and made to undergo excruciating pains and sufferings due to ongoing fuel crisis in the land.
The Nobel laureate said even before the current edition of the fuel crisis, other challenges, requiring immediate fix, had begun to monopolize national attention, relegating to the sidelines the outcry for a fundamental and holistic approach to the wearisome cycle of citizen trauma.
"This has been expressed most recently, and near universally in the word “Restructuring”, defined straightforwardly as a drastic overhaul of Nigerian articles of co-existence in a more rational, equitable and decentralized manner.
Such an overhaul, the re-positioning of the relationship between the parts and the whole offers, it has been strongly argued, prospects of a closer governance awareness of, and responsiveness to citizen entitlement. An overhaul that will near totally eliminate the frequent spasms of systemic malfunctioning that are in-built into the present protocols of national association.
"I recently ran the gauntlet of petroleum queues through three conveniently situated cities Lagos, Abeokuta and Ibadan deliberately, this Friday. Even with unorthodox aids of passage, this was no task for the faint-hearted. Just getting past fueling stations was traumatizing, an obstacle race through seething, frustrated masses of humanity, only to find ourselves on vast stretches of emptied roads pleading for occupation.
As for obtaining the petroleum in the first place the less said the better. I suspect that this government has permitted itself to be fooled by the peace of those empty streets, but also by the orderly, patient, long-suffering queues that are admittedly prevalent in the city centres,” he said.
Tags
Politics