Nobel Laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka, has added
his voice to the growing opposition against
federal government’s proposal to establish Ruga
settlements across the nation for herdsmen.
Speaking in Lagos on Tuesday at the launch of
United Nations’ Solutions 17 SDG programme,
Soyinka berated the federal government for the
idea, which will said can cause Nigeria to
explode.
According to him: “Ruga is going to be an
explosion if not handled with care. But why do
we not take our policies from good models? This
is not the way people and countries deal with
issues of cattle.
“I travel everywhere. It has to be handled in a
way that is logical, comprehensible to the
environment. When a cattle walks up to the
window of my house in Abeokuta, a house which
is located in a residential area, then there’s a
problem.
“When cattle goes to Ijebu Ode and eat up their
plant seedlings and so on and you expect people
to be quiet?”

He stated the handling of the herdsmen issue by
President Muhammadu Buhari was enough to
make him lose re-election.
“President Buhari deserved to have lost the last
election for the lackadaisical attitude he took to
the issue of cattle rearing in the country.
“People have been killed in hundreds just
because of the failure of leadership at a critical
time. And the cattle herders have been given a
sense of impunity. They kill without any
compunction, they drive away the farmers who
have been contributing to the food solutions in
the country, the cattle eat their crops and then
you come up with Ruga.
“I think that there is going to be trouble in this
country if this Ruga thing is not handled
imaginatively and with humanity as priority. Any
country where cattle takes priority over human
life is definitely at an elementary stage,” he
maintained.