WOLE Soyinka, Nigeria’s Nobel-winning author, sees his country’s many problems — misgoverning politicians, systemic corruption, violent extremists, and kidnapping bandits — yet he does not despair.
At 87, he says Nigeria’s youth may have the energy and the know-how to get the troubled country back on track.
It is up to the new generation “to decide whether they want to keep going along the same chugging one-track train,” or chart a new course, Soyinka told The Associated Press.
Soyinka credits young Nigerians — about 64 million between 15 and 35 years of the country’s more than 200 million people — for trying to fundamentally reform the country. He cites the Oct. 2020 #EndSARS protests against police brutality, comparing it to the “positive watersheds of resistance” during the years of military rule Nigeria endured for nearly 30 years.
Although the protests one year ago ended in shootings and the deaths of
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