Soyinka Opposes Dialogue With Boko Haram

Nobel laureate, Prof.Wole Soyinka yesterday dismissed calls for peace negotiations with Boko Haram and said Nigerian society is at stake in what he described as a war for survival.
Soyinka, a 78-year-old playwright and essayist, was once marked for death by one Nigerian military ruler.
Despite his often strained relations with his country’s military, Soyinka said the military go after Boko Haram while avoiding civilian casualties.
He acknowledged that grinding poverty in the north gave rise to Boko Haram, but said negotiating with “mass murderers” would not end the cycle of violence tearing at the country. He also suspects that crooked politicians had a role in Boko Haram’s early rise.
Politicians who wanted to rig elections “activated this brainwashed horde of religious militants. That’s how it started,” Soyinka told foreign journalists in Lagos. Boko Haram members then “looked at those who unleashed them and they realised they were being manipulated. ... And now they are completely out of control.”
Soyinka called the prospect of the government engaging in peace talks “abysmal appeasement.”