Jonathan, Obasanjo, Babangida, others should be prosecuted if they committed

Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, was our guest at the PUNCH FORUM, where he entertained questions on a variety of issues, including the ongoing anti-corruption fight of President Muhammadu Buhari and the need to heed clamour for the restructuring of the country. Dayo Oketola, Tobi Aworinde and Toluwani Eniola present the excerpts

During the Abacha era, you wrote a book, “The open sore of a continent: A personal narrative of the Nigerian crisis.” To quote one of the many statements you made there, “We may actually be witnessing a nation on the verge of extinction. We must also not neglect to decide the precise nature of the problematic. That is, are we trying to keep Nigeria as a nation, or are we trying to make it one? The difference is crucial.” Is Nigeria dying as a country?

I distinguish between what I call an organically evolved human entity and one which is arbitrarily imposed; in other words, which is created and constructed outside the will, the volition of the people. Because for me, I don’t look at a nation as a geographically bounded piece of real estate. I look at it from the point of view of its inhabitants; those who are committed to the nation and who feel that they are a part of it. Look at what is happening in Europe today — and I am not just referring to the recent Brexit. I actually have visited the Scottish parliament; I delivered a lecture there many years ago. And while I was there, it was virtually either on the eve of a referendum on whether Scotland wanted to stay in the United Kingdom or opt out. So, there is nothing new about people opting out of certain entities. There must be reasons why such an ancient, tested entity, such as the United Kingdom, must have felt that they didn’t want to be part of that entity any longer. In other words, I refer to that as an example of a nation that does not feel it is a nation in which a majority of the people, the circumstances, the culture, the economics—economic structure—for many of these reasons, maybe even just culture, for some of them, they are not quite a nation. And that leads to a desire to opt out and become a nation or at least try to be a nation. So, it is that distinction that I was referring to in that.

Also, you can have a slave plantation, which is regulated with facilities, ultra-modern facilities, and yet, because of the condition of the humanity inside it, it is not a nation. It’s just a slave plantation. This nation came very close to becoming a slave plantation under Abacha. In fact, it was already becoming one. The moment you start making excuses for brutality, dictatorship, inequality, injustice of any kind, you are already entering the status of a slave plantation. So, that’s what I was thinking at the time: Whether we see ourselves really as a people bound together under our own self-volition or we’ve succumbed to a new artificial construct under a brutal and incontinent dictator. That’s the distinction I was making. And at that time, I wasn’t sure because Nigerians were beginning to accommodate this unacceptable condition of humanity. So, to the question really thrown at Nigerians, are you sure you are a nation? Because if you continue to accept this, you are not a nation; you are just a slave plantation. If you are resisting, then you are trying to become a nation.

Between then and now, has anything changed?

Oh yes, a lot has changed. There is no perfection yet. If there were perfection in the United Kingdom, it would not be breaking up. If there were perfection in the European Union, it would not be breaking up. So, it is not yet a perfect human entity.

You are often quoted to have referred to your generation as a wasted generation. Given the popular impression that your generation had the best, juxtapose that generation with the present generation that does not have access to good education. Global statistics indicate that Nigeria is the worst place for a child to be born. Now, if your own generation could be classified as a wasted generation, how would you describe the present generation?

Just to show you that we have many possible definitions, somebody, a number of years after I used the expression ‘a wasted generation,’ said the generation following ours should be considered the lost generation. That means no sense of direction, no real vision. In other words, on the one hand, the wasted generation, we were complaining—or I was complaining on behalf of my generation—that we had such dreams, that we had such vision and we were ready to place our talent, whatever that was, at the service of the totality. And we felt that somehow, that crop of citizens had their talent and genuine commitment completely wasted by leadership. That was what I had in mind at the time. I think by the time the lost generation was so named, it became co-opted and it became a question of ‘If you cannot win, join me. We have no vision, we have no direction, so let’s swim with the tide.’ I think that’s what that person had in mind and I agree with that individual to a large extent. Now today, I think that we can justly say that this generation is a questing generation. It is questing; it is really searching, genuinely looking for a direction; hoping, sometimes wrongly, that ‘have we found it?’ But at least it is not as supine, complacent and collaborative as that generation which was described as the lost generation. I say this because I know many young people are actually finding their way back to this country, whereas before it was exit. ‘Me, Andrew? I am going.’ That was the joke, the expression at the time. But the reverse process is taking place. I don’t say that it is a full-blown tide, but we find a significant number of the generation after mine actually packing up, folding up, selling and saying ‘It doesn’t matter what it is, we’re coming back.’ Now, that could be because of problems outside as well. I’m not denying that. But I think the general feeling is ‘Look, it’s about time we made something of this mess and we’re coming back.’ So, I’ll call it a questing generation.

We have seen some countries where past leaders have been tried, prosecuted and they’ve gone to jail. Israel is an example. Brazil is currently happening. But there are some people who are describing Jonathan as a hero because he ceded power when he lost an election. How should the Buhari government go about it? If they have proven allegations against Jonathan, should government go ahead and try him?

Let me begin by saying that across the board; not Nigeria’s specific case, not the United States’ specific case or any nation, that I believe that there should be no statute of limitations. Even if for arguable reasons, we agree that people in certain positions of governance should be protected from frivolous litigations and therefore we use the word immunity while they are in office, the emphasis should be while in office. And even that should become qualified. If a president, for instance, commits murder maybe even as a cover-up for a crime of corruption, are we going to wait until he or she leaves office before we investigate and prosecute? Even immunity needs to be trimmed down; it should be limited immunity and there should be mechanism of dealing with malfeasances. (Former US president Bill) Clinton nearly lost his office over sexual misdemeanour. He was just saved by the same political process that put him there. Now, corruption in very high places is very difficult to investigate but that does not mean that investigation should stop. You intimidate witnesses; even as we know, witnesses disappear and so one needs to be patient and not imagine that investigating a crime in high places will be a straightforward process like investigating somebody like me. Having sort of tried to trim down the concept of immunity, what happens when an individual leaves office having committed crimes including corruption? If you say the immunity clause applies even after leaving office, that means there is absolutely no fear, no inhibition in the ruler and the ruler feels like he or she can do whatever they want in office. That leads us to your question. Whether it’s Jonathan, whether it’s any living ex-head of states: Babangida, Obasanjo,  Shagari. If a crime is uncovered while that individual was in office, after he’s left office, then that individual must be prosecuted. He or she has left office and become an ordinary citizen. He doesn’t have the burden of responsibility for millions of people, which is one reasons why we might say ‘listen; leave this individual alone unless we can absolutely prove a crime against him or her.’ Otherwise, we’ll have a situation where even individuals can hold the nation to ransom simply because they have secret forces which can blow up pipes and in effect granting themselves immunity even while not in office or never having held office. We’ve got to accept the fact that sooner or later justice must catch up with every individual who has committed some crimes against the community. It is a very simple formula and I think part of our problems is that we tend to temporise it. In other words, we say that given the circumstances of the nation and supporters of this ex-leader, therefore, justice should not take its course. We also personalise it and say that because there is now a change of government, it will be seen as an act of persecution against the person who was there before. These are wrong attitudes towards governance. What is the responsibility of somebody who is in governance? Among other responsibilities, anybody in governance is supposed to lead by example.  You must lead by example and if you fail, you must be prosecuted. Now, you have the Senate President who is being accused of one crime after the other and people are screaming, saying this is discrimination because of some political disagreements. The issue is did that individual steal money? Did that individual forge? Did that individual commit, shall we say, sexual offence? The issue is guilt or innocence and the structures are there to prove guilt or innocence. So, if you acted in a way which drew suspicion on yourself, you’ve got to move to clear yourself. It’s either you go to the civil court or you subject yourself   to the mechanism of justice which is what makes civilised societies. If the present head of state or any head of state has decided that this is what I want to leave behind as legacy that I clean up this rotten stinking state; if that is his or her mission as head of state, I think citizens cannot complain about it unless they say it is okay to institutionalise corruption. And we know very well where corruption has got us. We have people who not only appear to endorse corruption, but actually to be aggressively against any effort being made to sanitise the nation.  Buhari has got this obsession; it’s a legitimate one. It cannot be faulted under any circumstance unless you can prove that he’s destroying the society. So, leave him alone to use the mechanism of state to score his goal.

A lot has been said about our political office holders, the amount of money spent to maintain them in office and even when they leave office, how much is spent to cater for their needs and pay pension to them and even some of them who are not even covered by the constitution to receive such. What can be done to correct this or is this the right way for the nation to go? Can we afford to spend so much money on people who have held political offices, some not with distinction?

Let’s begin on holistic basis.  Is this presidential system we are running right now not facilitating excessive demand on the purse of the nation? Te demand pension for some lawmakers is just another dimension to the wrongness or inappropriateness of the governance structure for this nation. Shortly after the period of one of the military governments, when the legislators met for the first time, I have never forgotten this; their priority was allowances (nothing wrong with that). But they were legislating for allowances which included their funeral. I remember the proposal included that if they died in office, they should get something like a state funeral, et cetera. And I said what on earth is this? The rest of us, who strive to be productive members of the society, so we are not entitled to die sometime and therefore to have provisions made by the state for our funeral. This was how absurd their demand was and this was mainly the continuation of that mentality which arises from the nature of governance we have in this country. We had situations where governors, whether or not it was in their pension scheme, when they left office, they took away covers of toilet seats; they took away the door knobs of government houses (I was taken to see some of these things). They unscrewed the silver water faucet to go and make new homes for themselves in spite of the fact that their allowance when they were leaving was such that it just begs our imagination. This was at a time when the average salary of a legislator here was even higher than sometimes the presidents’ earnings in certain other nations. So, we have an absurd system which allows absurdities like we are witnessing now. If we had, for instance, a system that did not make legislators full-time lawmakers as in some countries, I believe that economically, this is the kind of system that we need; part-time legislators. When we have such a system, nobody will have the nerve to say that ‘because I’m a part-time legislator, therefore I should be pensioned for life for serving the nation for one or two terms.’ How absurd and how unfeeling can it get? Let’s look at the entire system and let’s begin there. But in the meantime, let’s try and frustrate these absurd demands as much as possible.

During the civil war, you aligned with Biafra and you maintained that the breaking away of the Igbo people, though was politically unwise, was not morally wrong. Now we have so many militants groups. Do you still maintain that position that people have rights to carry arms against Nigeria?

When is a nation? When do we actually become a nation? My answer to that is in the negative. It is not when we submit supinely to the political will of others. Nigeria is a project; we are at work on the project and if a constituent part of that project is made to feel unwanted, especially in such a brutal way. Now, when you use that expression, I am not saying that the leader of that section which broke away is innocent of every conceivable crime. We are not saying that. One thing leads to another; one causes another. But what we could not escape; what we cannot escape, even till today, was that what the Biafrans underwent goes by one name: genocide. It is close to genocide; if it is not exactly genocide, it is so close to genocide as to make the people feel that they have been victims of a genocidal agenda on other parts of the nation. And so, they felt that they were no longer part and they looked at their history and they said, ‘I want to go back to being whatever we were before and begin from there and constitute ourselves as a new entity.’ And I find nothing morally wrong about that. On the other hand, I find it morally justifiable under any circumstances; circumstances are never quite perfect. I don’t want people saying to me, ‘Their leaders also killed the political and military leaders.’ Yes, we know that happened and that the critical coup, yes, it could be perceived as being so one-sided as per being a kind of ethnic attack on the others. I am not denying all of that. But I am saying, look at the entire progression. Look at the images from the massacre. Look at how they were hounded. Look, if you like, at how, as I have expressed in one of our diaries, my wife’s wardrobe was decimated by friends who had to escape with their lives and had to leave with women’s clothing. Examples: I can name some of them today. I’m talking viscerally actively; I’m talking about what happened during that (war). I am talking about the droves of lorries loaded with belongings, humanity crossing the Asaba Bridge back. And the conduct of the military at that time was, if your accent was just mildly close to the accent of the Igbo people, you were dead. You were dead either on Carter Bridge; you were dead either on the road over there. And so when a situation like that happens, and people gather themselves in, I believe that till today it is wrong to wage war on them for desiring to create a legal entity. So, my disagreement with Biafra at the time was that what they did was militarily unwise because politically, maybe still avoidable. But morally, absolutely, it cannot be faulted. In my morality, I cannot fault it. And in any case, look at what is happening all over the world. Look at the disintegration of the Soviet Union; they breakaway, sometimes mutually, sometimes not so mutually. Look at what’s happened in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Yugoslavia, etcetera. Are you saying that the citizens of this area called West Africa are second-class human beings? Why should you say so categorically that we cannot separate? No, I am on the side of those who say we must do everything to avoid disintegration. That language I understand. I don’t understand Obasanjo’s language. I don’t understand Buhari’s language and all their predecessors saying the sovereignty of this nation is non-negotiable. It’s bloody well negotiable and we had better negotiate it. We better negotiate it, not even at meetings, not at conferences, but every day in our conduct towards one another. The recognition of entities towards a wisdom of non-marginalisation under any circumstances. We had better understand that and negotiate. We had better understand it too that when people are saying “Let’s restructure,” they have better things to do. It’s not an idle cry; it is a perennial demand. PRONACO was about restructuring when this same Obasanjo said it was an act of treason for people to come together to fashion a new constitution. Those are fighting words; that you’re saying I commit treason because I want to sit with my fellow citizens and negotiate the structures of staying together and ask the police to go and break it up and arrest us. I remember that policeman who said if we met, that would be treason. I wasn’t a member of PRONACO at the time. That’s when I joined PRONACO. If you’re saying to me, I am a second-class citizen; I cannot sit down and discuss the articles, the protocols of staying together and you’re trying to bully me, I won’t accept. So, the moral issue for me is very straight-forward. Let’s talk, let’s reconstruct, let’s reorganise. Let’s look at alternatives elsewhere in the world. Let’s think up others of our own that nobody ever thought of and reinvent the wheel, if necessary. But if we really are serious about staying together, then for heaven’s sake, don’t use words to me like ‘inviolable.’ Which deity put us together in the first place that I cannot even go on my knees and pray to that deity, ‘Could you undo the errors?’ That language I don’t accept and they shouldn’t use it to us.

If the restructuring discussion is made impossible, what is the alternative?

I am sure that if it may be impossible, there may be entities which find it that they can accommodate it. As I keep saying, no governance ideology is perfect. The reality, the product is never perfect. So, there are those that say it is not worth agitating about, even verbally. If you feel comfortable, that’s good. There are others, however, who would say, ‘Well sorry, you are declaring war on us and we will respond.’

What are your thoughts on state police?

I know people get nervous about that expression. But what is policing? Policing is, in effect, looking out for your community where you’re based; looking out for the community next to you. It is preventing harm to the community and if that fails of acting to detect the causes, the perpetrators and taking them to court. It’s securing; making people feel secure. If you go to a place like England, you sometimes see two, three, four police (officers) just walking casually unarmed, but they are observing everything. If something happens tomorrow where they’ve been, they are able to say, ‘We saw something yesterday,’ and then talk to community: ‘Did you see what I saw?’ Now, if policing is all of that, then I think the police is more efficient if it is based within a smaller constituency than a larger one. Within such constituencies, the policeman virtually knows everybody. A federal, centralised system of police lacks that advantage. You can be plucked from here and sent to an area where the community runs rings around you. You would be walking around and it is like the more you look, the less you see. But you have a smaller police structure, responsible, living among the people, understanding the fathers and the grandfathers and the histories of the neighbours and so on; knowing which house was built at a certain time, knowing which of the uncompleted houses where most of these crimes sometimes are plotted and so on. That is a more efficient police. State police is not the beginning of disintegration and it is not against the existence of a federal policing structure. It is not just those who walk the streets. We have a very deep, sophisticated structure, especially these days of modern gadgetry with centralised computerised systemic bands, not just for criminals, but also for facilitators and so on. All those will exist side-by-side. So, I find it very difficult to accept that people can be nervous about the state police. State police has been abused. Nobody is denying that; it’s historical. Don’t tell us because we know already. But isn’t centralised police also abused? Look at what’s been coming out from the last elections, not just the police, but the military. Look at what they’ve been doing. If a soldier’s fingernail happens to be scratched accidentally by a fellow passenger in a bus, the soldier runs to his barracks, collects everybody. He says, ‘I have just been abused.’ They violate the entire community. So, it is not even the system itself which is abusing the military. It is these individuals who take the law into their own hands. We read the policeman who recently reported in one of your papers: ‘I’m a policeman by day and a robber by night.’ So, anything can be abused. That shouldn’t be the basis on which we make decisions, principle or policy. Because something is going wrong within a unit, it doesn’t mean alternative systems won’t work better. I know during the early days, the Akintola days, my personal experience of the abuse; the abuse of my wife by the local police because they still existed at the time. Instances where, during the political season, they would tie a goat into the backyard—this is a real incident—of one of the opposition. It happened in Ibadan. No sooner had the goat died than a smarm of police came and arrested the man, his family, everything and threw them inside the native administration prison for stealing a goat, simply because they did what? I can cite numerous instances of abuse of police. But we know that for efficiency and especially for a large society of—what was the last count? Let’s say 150 million—we want to have just centralised police for a population of 150 million? This is absurd. Let’s be serious about it, if we understand the real meaning of police work and their relationship with community, it is absurd to say that state police is something negative.

There has been uproar over Chief of Army Staff, Lt.-Gen. Tukur Buratai’s ownership of two properties in Dubai. Some Nigerians are already asking for his sacking. How do you think the government should handle this?

I think the government should not take instances like that nonchalantly. You’ve got to satisfy the people. The kind of statements we make. There is a former president who was bankrupt when he came into office, definitely, and by the time he left, he had mansions. And I said instances like that should be investigated. What was your salary? What is your pension today, even if the nation was feeding you and your family for eight years? We know the cost of living. So, I take the same position with somebody like Buratai and also any individual who’s held public office. I think a demand by the public: ‘Look let’s have a proper investigation. Fighting corruption is not simply going after complaints which have been made. The essence of anti-corruption organs is that if anything looks suspicious, you investigate it. You must be able to ask people: sit down, just tell us, were you trading in stocks and shares? Did your grandfather leave you (an inheritance)? I think it is a fair demand and it doesn’t take much. Publish the statement and people will be satisfied. Or you will articulate their dissatisfaction. But you cannot neglect charges like that. And Dubai has the same connotation for us here in Nigeria. So, if you hear tomorrow that I have an ahere (hut) in Dubai, I think you’d better investigate it. What was I doing in Dubai to be buying an ahere when I know how much I’m paying for diesel here? It is enough to be the pension of a chief clerk who has spent all his life, just the amount on diesel alone.

While the President was quick to describe the Niger Delta Avengers and Biafra agitators as criminals, nothing is being done about the Fulani herdsmen’s killings. What do you think about this?

Let me repeat, and my position is not an abstract one, it’s a personal experience. As you know, one of my favorite forms is what I call ‘taking my gun for a walk in the bush.’ Quite a long time ago, I had noticed a manifestation which I found very troubling. The character of the herdsmen we were meeting in the bush from time to time had begun to change. It really changed drastically. There were areas deep inside the upper Ogun area such as Saki. The qualities and personalities of the herdsmen we were meeting were changing. We thought that it was Boko Haram setting up camps in the area. I remember meeting the late Gen. Azazi and asking: Are you sure these people (Boko Haram) are not penetrating here (upper Ogun area) and setting up camps?  And he said he had noticed the phenomenon. Today, the clashes have become rampant between the farmers and the herdsmen. Farmers in the villages that we go talk to us about the aggression. How they (Fulani herdsmen) confidently trample on their farmlands and spoke to them. If they didn’t attack you that very moment, they will come back and attack the farmers. So, what we are talking about is something which goes back to about 20 years.  I know that this present President had an encounter with the late governor of Oyo State when he went as patron of Fulani herdsmen. I know there was a showdown. So, it’s an ancient situation. I would have thought that from his (Buhari’s) own past experience, Buhari should have taken this issue more seriously and more urgently than has been evident.   This is not something that should be postponed. This is an immediate issue to which the President should have devoted maximum and urgent time. It’s got so bad that it come home to me; to my sanctuary in Abeokuta. Cows have been driven through my land, the green areas that I have salvaged. I couldn’t believe it. I came back at the end of one of my trips and found that they had created an apian way   through my land. Since I spoke about it, they’ve come back a second time. But this, I don’t think they were so many. It is no longer a remote problem even for me. It is an actuality and as you know farmers are being killed. They are even being ambushed. There was an incident a few years ago, we went hunting and we met these farmers around Oyo area, where the farmers had got together to discuss this (herdsmen) menace and decide what to do, and they were ambushed and attacked. So, governors, I am sure must have been sending their own reports to security agencies. In Enugu, why did it take so long? What is security for? That thing (herdsmen’s attacks) should have been addressed immediately and what happened in Enugu, they shouldn’t have waited for directives from Buhari or anybody. This is a crime against humanity. There should be no debate about it. The military should have been drafted there immediately, the police first of all, and the military, if necessary. And then I found out even some of the victims were arrested, what’s all that about? This (Fulani herdsmen’s) menace is being underestimated. If it had reached me in my secure space in Abeokuta, then it is no longer a remote problem.

But the government is already planning to set up grazing reserves in different parts of the country

The word reserve is the problem. If there are ranches, it doesn’t matter, ranches are a commercial proposition, and it isn’t a Fulani issue. You can create ranches so that cattle, cows, goats, and what have you can graze. Setting up ranches should not be an instrument of politics, race or ethnic but just commodity, food. So when you talk about food, there is a kind of volatile connotation there. You are saying in effect that the clashes can be justified by legislation which entitles people to special powers and then reserves. It should be something to be taken up between the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Trade, Commerce and Industry and it should be protected. But when you say reserves, it suggests that people can bring cattle from Futa Djalon and Senegal and if they get here, they can go to the reserves. I think that’s very dangerous. Just treat it as a pure commercial proposition, you want to trade and you bring your goods to somewhere. There are farms and there are ranches. I think this is the kind of solution that can take away the very volatile ethnic connotations that have been inserted into what I see clearly. I will like to see these cattle people go back to what they were before in which there was mutual collaboration between them and the farmers. I think that is possible. Let’s commercialise these commodities and there are rules and those rules are enforced.

What are your thoughts on the fact that the current administration is not willing to take a look at the recommendations of the last National Conference under President Goodluck Jonathan?  

We are very good at that in this country. From what I see; from what I have been able to discern and speaking as objectively as possible, I think that the report that came under Jonathan is even more superior to the one that I participated in as a member of PRONACO. And I think that should be addressed seriously. We have a habit of consigning files to the dust shelves in this country and then we start all over again. The recommendations that came from the Akinyemi exercise, the recommendations strike me as workable, practical, and in fact as answering some of the anxieties of this nation. This is something I think that Buhari should tackle very seriously. There is no reason at all why a committee of actualisation shouldn’t have been set up and gone into the practicalisation mode immediately. Otherwise, we are going to meet again, talk again, go home again, and then grumble again. Then we come back again, and we start talking about restructuring again. We will just be going round and round in a circle. When are we going to stop?  We have no more excuses; we have seen what fragmentation can do either as a result of religion, quote or unquote religion, or economic deprivation or political marginalisation, we know fragmentation can come from just a small flashpoint when people feel, here they come again. So for heaven’s sake, involve the entire nation in the practicalisation of these confab reports or else put it to a referendum, but do something. Let’s just not say oh another conference has come and gone.

Former President Olusegun Obasanjo, in a recent interview with The PUNCH, said you were not his friend. Are you Obasanjo’s friend?

He was quite right. For once he told the truth. We are not friends. We cannot be friends. We are acquaintances; I respect certain positive things in him, but for the rest, negative.

What is your take on restructuring? What direction should restructuring take?

On restructuring, let’s begin with this; do we or do we not recognise the fact that the centralisation, which is what we are running now, is detrimental to the progress of the nation? So, any kind of constitutional meeting which says decentralise, for me is a 100 per cent. It’s a question of to what degree do we decentralise?  But we cannot continue along a centralisation policy which makes the constituent units of this nation resentful, they say ‘monkey dey work, baboon dey chop.’ And the idea of centralised revenue allocation system whereby you dole out; the thing is insulting and is what I call anti-healthy rivalry, anti the incentive to make states viable, contest for viability which leads to the second questions. Do we not agree that there are some states in this nation which should not be? They are not viable. We know that some states were created during the military era to satisfy girlfriends who came from a particular state. That is the kind of nation we are living in. Those states should be given a chance to merge under whatever convenient and mutually agreeable system. So, the parts of those  recommendations which decentralise and which gave non-viable states a chance to be honest and say, listen we are tired of being beggars, absorb us. We are carrying lumbers, useless unproductive lumbers good only for creating dissention, internal violence, disagreement etc. We have here a situation where a government is being held to ransom .The current government has swung into action to talk to the Niger Delta Avengers, there is something wrong really, structurally and it’s got to be corrected. It was Richard Nixon, during the Vietnam War, who said we are going to bomb them into submission. That phrase kept cropping up over the last few weeks, that you and I are being bombed into submission. Isn’t that what is happening? So, why don’t we then take the whole issue holistically? I am not saying don’t talk to the avengers, I am not saying talk to the avengers, I am just saying understand what led you into this past and what led you to start talking to the avengers. And take it, avengers don’t come only from one region or from one religion, that you can have the same phenomenon, threatening the stability, economy and the very survival of the country from other directions. So, don’t be complacent, try and deal with this issue piecemeal. Treat it for once. Someone needs to have the courage to take the bull by the horns and treat this restructuring holistically. Otherwise, avengers today, revengers tomorrow and what have you.