Wole Soyinka Reveals What Ex President Goodluck Jonathan Said When He (Soyinka) Told Him About Chibok Girls

Wole Soyinka has disclosed the reaction of former Nigeria President Goodluck Jonathan to the abduction of school girls in Chibok during his tenure.

The Nobel Laureate said that when he reached out to Dr. Jonathan in the wake of the Chibok abduction, the former president dismissed him.

Speaking on Thursday at a dialogue organized by Ripples Centre for Data and Investigative Journalism in Lagos, the Nigerian playwright said Jonathan told him that the abduction of the schoolgirls was his own business and he should deal with it.

He said Jonathan believed the opposition was using the abduction to discredit his government, and it wasn’t until three weeks after the incident that Jonathan acknowledged that over 200 girls had indeed been abducted in Chibok, Borno state.

Soyinka said: “I reached out to former President Jonathan, and protested, chiding him severely on his reaction over the abduction of the Chibok girls. I said to him; ‘you want to be accepted as a political leader, and you do not even accept as your duty to be there, at the scene of the disaster?’ And I asked him, did you actually utter those words attributed to you?  His response remains a riddle to me till today.”

He continued: “His exact words to me, not easily forgotten I assure you, were ‘Kampala tie niyen,’ meaning that is your own Kampala.”

With history repeating itself in Dapchi where schoolgirls were recently abducted, Soyinka said that rather than visiting the affected areas, Buhari should speak to people’s security needs, and bring perpetrators to book. He said that failure on the part of government has been the reason the country is yet to get over the security challenges.