Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, said he told the presidential candidates of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, and the ruling All Progressives Co
Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, said he told the presidential candidates of the People’s Democratic Party, PDP, and the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, Atiku Abubakar and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, respectively, to leave the stage for fresh energies to assume the helm of affairs in Nigeria.
Soyinka disclosed this while speaking in an interview with Arise TV on Wednesday.
He said, “I told Atiku when he was contesting and came to see me in my Ikeja office few years ago; he came with Gbenga Daniel, my former governor (of Ogun state). I said to him, ‘Listen, it’s about time you people left the stage, why don’t you just go away. We need an infusion of fresh blood into the system’.
“I said so I cannot support you. I think your generation should quit. But, he wasn’t the only one. I then sought out the current President-elect, Tinubu and I gave him exactly the same message. I said, ‘Whatever you people are planning, I’m convinced that we need the young generation, new thinking, new sensibilities, new energies’.
“So, why don’t you just leave the stage, let’s look for somebody, a really brilliant individual, then use your entire influence to catapult that person to power, and this country will see a massive transformation. We spoke for about an hour and a half, and then Bola Tinubu said, ‘No’. He said there were still things he felt he could still contribute,” Soyinka said.
As for Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Soyinka said he warned the presidential him on the excesses of his supporters, otherwise known as ‘Obidients’.
In a statement he signed titled, ‘Media responsibility’ which he released on Tuesday, Soyinka maintained that his rejection of fascism wasn’t new and that on three occasions, he was able to send a message to Obi, that, if he lost the election, it would be his followers who lost it for him.
“I also denounced the menacing utterances of a vice-presidential aspirant as unbecoming. It was a gladiatorial challenge directed at the judiciary and, by implication, the rest of the democratic polity.
“It was depressing to watch his lieutenant, a crucially positioned voice of a movement that has ‘broken the mould’, threaten the totality of social existence. Whatever our ideological leaning, is Donald Trump the ideal template for a burgeoning democracy in the nation?”
“But what on earth has happened to my even more urgent condemnation of the physical violence inflicted on those designated ‘strangers’ in Lagos in the lead up to, and during governorship elections?
“Like a number of others, I have admittedly contributed to the making of this moment – going back several years – and it is painful to have the followers of such a movement, send it slithering backwards and down the fascistic slope,” Soyinka’s statement partly read.
Soyinka also stated that he has continued to stress that the final word had yet to be pronounced on the elections.
