Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka Wednesday lectured those at the helms of affairs at the federal level on ‘empathy’.
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He said the decision to attend the Kano rally organized to welcome a former governor of the state, Ibrahim Shekarau to the ruling PDP, shows that political rally is more important to him than tackling insurgency.
Soyinka therefore, felt top functionaries at the centre needed to be lectured, saying “Permit me to impose on the leadership of this nation a simple straightforward exercise in empathy.
“I want you to imagine yourself in a hospital ward; one among the over thousand victims of so many origins in Nigeria. You remember that the actual and wounded are not the only casualties.
“On that hospital bed, you find yourself playing host to the high and mighty. You are immobilized, speechless and incapable of motion, except perhaps to your eyelids.
“Local government chairmen, councilors, ministers, senators and the nation’s President, making promises of free medical treatment and rehabilitation among others, then your spirits are uplifted. You no longer feel depressed and abandoned.
“A few hours after the departure of your August visitors, you see your erstwhile visitors participating in a chieftaincy jollification, just a few hundred miles away.
“Again, a few hours later, the same leadership is at a campaign rally, where the chief custodian of the people’s welfare is complaining that someone allegedly diverted campaign funds to unauthorised use.
“That national leader then rounds off his outing with a dance that would put Michael Jackson to shame,” he said, leaving the audience to ponder over it.
Soyinka also condemned the activities of the Islamist sect, Boko Haram, saying Islam does not teach violence as they are making the people to believe.
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