Nigeria will never progress, if the mind is not restructured – Wole Soyinka

Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, at the weekend gave his backing to the call for restructuring of the country, adding that the people of the country should not just call for restructuring but be ready to be intellectually restructured because restructuring starts from the mind.

The Nobel Laurent who spoke in Yenagoa the Bayelsa state capital at the D.S.P Alamiesiegha banquet hall during a state banquet to round up his one day visit to Bayelsa state.

He said today, the oil is still being siphoned in the wrong direction. “When I read in the papers that herdsmen are in Bayelsa, I said why is this clash with the herdsmen in oil producing state?

“When we talk of restructuring, I think of an organization of generation of existence that manages their resources. It is a way to socialise and teach people a way to recreate and generate their own
lives.”
He commended the Bayelsa state governor for placing the state’s resources on the altar of education.
“The most important is education. If it is pursed and achieved, we will see the result.”

The professor of Comparative Literatures said that it is true that restructuring in Nigeria is inevitable but maintained that “if all, especially the youths, are not mentally restructured, the entire clamour for restructuring will not work.”

Recall that the people of the Niger Delta have been calling for restructuring for a long time while other parts of the country have also recently joined in the clamour.
“What I know about restructuring is restructuring the mind and by restructuring the mind, everything will be in place. And if you don’t restructure the mind, you find out that they will always be siphoning the oil. Restructuring is not invisible.”

The state governor, Henry Seriake Dickson, in his response thanked the Soyinka for re-awakening the consciousness of education on the youths of the state.

“Today we have started the deepening of commissioning of minds. We have started deepening what I also call the circumcision of the mind.
The way we open the minds of our future generation in a way that you will not be able to determine, only the future can tell.”

The high point of the banquet was the handing over of a personalised plaque to the literary icon of the Bayelsa state logo.