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 Laureate, Wole Soyinka, has said.
Speaking to Reuters at his Abeokuta home, Soyinka 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.”
