ABEOKUTA Nigeria (Reuters) - Nigeria is
suffering greater carnage at the hands of
Islamist group Boko Haram than it did
during a secessionist civil war, yet this has
ironically made the country's break-up less
likely, Nigerian Nobel Literature Laureate
Wole Soyinka said.
Speaking to Reuters at his home
surrounded by rainforest near the
southwestern city of Abeokuta, Soyinka said
the horrors inflicted by the militants had
shown Nigerians across the mostly Muslim
north and Christian south that sticking
together might be the only way to avoid
even greater sectarian slaughter.
The bloodshed was now worse than during
the 1967-70 Biafra war when a
secessionist attempt by the eastern Igbo
people nearly tore Nigeria up into ethnic
regions, he added.
"We have never been confronted with
butchery on this scale, even during the civil
war," Soyinka said in his front room,
surrounding by traditional wooden
sculptures of Yoruba deities on Tuesday.
"There were atrocities (during Biafra) but
we never had such a near predictable level
of carnage and this is what is horrifying,"
said the writer, who was imprisoned for
two years in solitary confinement by the
military regime during the war on charges
of aiding the Biafrans.
Soyinka, a playwright and one of Africa's
leading intellectuals who still wears his
distinctive white Afro hairstyle, turns 80 in
two weeks. He was awarded the Nobel
Prize for Literature in 1986, the first African
writer to receive it.
A million people died during the Biafra war,
though mostly through starvation and
illness, rather than violence.
Boko Haram's five-year-old struggle to carve
out an Islamic state from its bases in the
remote northeast has become increasingly
bloody, with near daily attacks killing many
thousands.
The conflict's growing intensity has led
Nigerian commentators to predict it may
split the country, 100 years after British
colonial rulers cobbled Nigeria together
from their northern and southern
protectorates. [ID:nL6N0NF3F4]
"I think ironically it's less likely now,"
Soyinka said. "For the first time, a sense of
belonging is predominating. It's either we
stick together now or we break up, and we
know it would be not in a pleasant way."
GOVERNMENTS LET IN RELIGION
Boko Haram's abduction of more than 200
schoolgirls in April drew unprecedented
international attention to the insurgency
and pledges of aid from Western powers,
but violence has worsened.
Boko Haram fighters frequently massacre
whole villages, gunning down fleeing
residents and burning their homes.
Nigeria, amalgamated by the British in
1914, brought together often historically
antagonistic peoples - principally the largely
Muslim Fulani, Hausa and Kanuri of the
North, and the Yoruba, Igbo and other
peoples of the mostly Christian south.
Several regional movements have launched
low-level independence campaigns that get
little national attention. But Soyinka said
fewer people were shrugging off Boko
Haram's menace.
"It's almost unthinkable to say: 'well, let's
leave them to their devices.' Very few
people are thinking that way."
Attacks spreading southwards, including
three bombings in the capital since April,
showed it was not a just a northern
problem.
"The (Boko Haram) forces that would like to
see this nation break up are the very forces
which will not be satisfied having their
enclave," he said. "(We) are confronted with
an enemy that will never be satisfied with
the space it has."
Soyinka blamed successive governments for
allowing religious fanaticism to undermine
Nigeria's broadly secular constitution,
starting with former President Olusegun
Obasanjo allowing some states to declare
Sharia law in the early 2000s.
"When the spectre of Sharia first came up,
for political reasons, this was allowed to
hold, instead of the president defending the
constitution," he said.
Soyinka sees both Christianity and Islam as
foreign impositions.
"We cannot ignore the negative impact
which both have had on African society," he
told Reuters. "They are imperialist forces:
intervening, arrogant. Modern Africa has
been distorted."
He added that while the leadership of Boko
Haram needed to be "decapitated
completely", little had been done to present
an alternative ideological vision to their
"deluded" followers, driven largely by
economic destitution and despair.

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