Soyinka Warns on Threat by Miyetti Allah, Says We Have Suitable Response in Ogun

Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, on Tuesday warned the National President of the Miyetti Allah Kautal Hore, Alhaji Abdullahi Bodejo, over his constant threat on state governors, to carve out large portions of lands (cattle colonies) in their states for nomadic herdsmen activities if they want to live in peace in the country.

Soyinka told journalists shortly after he paid a courtesy visit on Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State at the Government House in Makurdi that each state governor has the protection of the Nigerian constitution to take their own decisions and enforce them as best as they can provided it is in the best interest of the state.

He said grazing law which state like Benue is implementing is the best that promotes the modern method of animal husbandry.

"You see, each state must realise that it has to take their own decisions and enforce them as best as they can.

 "All I have to say to people who make such kind of threats is that when they come to Ogun State, we will have a suitable response for them, and I think all the states of the federation should take the same position," he said.

On the issue of the closure of Nigerian borders to boost local food production, Soyinka said the greatest mistake Nigerians leaders made at the beginning was the embracing of capital intensive ventures like the steel industry instead of agriculture which he said is fast taking over crude oil.

"This is one of the things that have to be redressed. I think that the mistake we made at the beginning of our development plans is going for heavy capital intensive ventures like the steel industry.

"I am trying to make a contrast with countries like India where they encouraged small or cottage industries of development. I visited one of the industrial states many years ago when Rajiv Ghandi was still the Prime Minister, and I was impressed. I went through all the stores I saw all the small manufacturers, and there were spare parts and also regional items required for development," he said.

Soyinka said it was better for the government to have put enough machinery in place to facilitate local food manufacturing before embarking on border closure.

"If we had done that at the very beginning, we would have a culture of local manufacturing, small scale but sufficient and distributed in a way in which there are productive centers all over the country. But we have been concentrating on foreign production and I think the reason for that is the discovery of crude oil, and we all began to drink oil and now we are choking on that product and that is our problem,” he added.