The notion that Wole Soyinka’s pedigree should exempt him from criticism is a very silly notion. Puerile, even!
While the playwright’s records as a human right crusader and social justice activist are not in doubt, some of his actions, inactions and utterances especially in recent years and now, are beginning to paint an entirely different picture.
Looking at his most recent media outing on the 2023 polls, the comparative literature professor exhibited all the characteristics of a man whose mouth is filled with hot agbado. And we must not shy away from saying this. He sounded quite dishonest, hypocritical and I dare say, more like a man procured to peddle a certain narrative on behalf of some people.
Watching the interview, it is clear that Soyinka’s main objectives were simply to confer the toga of legitimacy on the INEC’s appointed president, Bola Tinubu, regurgitate the APC’s worn out narrative of painting Obi-Datti and the OBIDIENT MOVEMENT as the aggressors while those who provoked this current tension by conducting the worst election in Nigeria’s history, killing innocent Nigerians and disenfranchised millions are the victims.
Between an election DELIBERATELY designed to be DEEPLY FLAWED and reactions from the victims of such election, which should draw more outrage from a genuine democrat like our Prof. who fully understands that CREDIBLE ELECTION is at the very root of democracy and that once the electoral process is flawed, the genuineness of such democracy is called into question?
This morning on Arise, the Nobel Laureate even lied against Datti Baba-Ahmed when he claimed the LP vice presidential candidate said the Supreme Court MUST nullify Tinubu’s election or….; an utterance the Octogenarian claimed amounts to threatening the Supreme Court. For the record, Baba-Ahmed never threatened the judiciary. The video of what Datti said is online for anyone to watch. He ignored the main issue of justice and adherence to constitutional requirements Datti was addressing to focus on picking out inflammatory statement from thin air. How dishonest!
Let us even PRETEND to have forgotten how our award winning poet lost his tongue when this same APC people whom he supported against Jonathan in 2015, publicly threatened to form a parallel govt if they weren’t declared winner of the election.
Curiously, our revered literary god finds the behavior of the OBIDIENT whom he described as FASCISTS more troubling than he did the action of well known figures and members of Tinubu’s campaign team like Femi Fani-Kayode, Bayo Onanuga, Festus Keyamo, MC Oluomo, among others, who publicly engaged in ethnic profiling and threatened Igbos in Lagos (a threat that was later carried out to the fullest in a Rwanda 1994 style and defended by the Nigeria Police Force spokesperson as a joke) and have continued to incite hate against them even after the election WITH TINUBU refusing to condemn their action. Our good Prof. merely said the action was distasteful.
Not even the ethnic slurs from FFK which were strong enough to warrant a straightforward condemnation from the British deputy high commissioner in Nigeria, Ben Llewellyn-Jones deserved specific condemnation from our Prof.
The INEC chairman who wasted over N350 billion and gave us an election adjudged the worst by all the observers didn’t deserve Soyinka’s mention?
It is even more curious that the white bearded one who was CONVENIENTLY quiet while all the electoral genocide was taking place and amidst all the killings suddenly found his tongue to tag OBIDIENTS fascists at a time when Tinubu camp and the APC have intensified their DEMONIZATION CAMPAIGN against Obi and his supporters.
Coincidence?
A betting man would bet it is not and as it happens, Charles Ogbu is a betting man.
But the big question remains, has the man finally died in Kongi?
