Professor Wole Soyinka has said that Nigeria is currently suffering greater carnage at the hands of the Boko Haram than it did during a secessionist Civil War but stressed that the situation has ironically made the country’s break-up less likely.
Soyinka who spoke to Reuters at his Abeokuta home said the horrors inflicted by the militants had shown Nigerians that unity between Muslims and Christians might be the only way to avoid even greater sectarian slaughter.
“The bloodshed is now worse than during the 1967-70 Civil War when a secessionist attempt by the Eastern region nearly tore the country into ethnic regions,” he added.
According to Soyinka, “we have never been confronted with butchery on this scale, even during the civil war.
“There were atrocities during the war, but we never had such a near predictable level of carnage and this is what is horrifying.”
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