*Describes utterances by Labour Party Vice-Presidential candidate, Datti Baba-Ahmed as ‘fascistic’ in tendencies
*Offers $1000 to anyone who could trace fake attributions affixed to his name in the media to him
NOBEL Laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka, says he advised the presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, Atiku Abubakar, and his All Progressives Congress counterpart, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to step down for the younger generation.
Soyinka spoke while featuring on the Arise Television morning show today.
Recall that Tinubu won the 2023 presidential election, beating close rivals Atiku, and Labour Party’s Peter Obi.
Atiku and Obi have since headed to the courts to challenge Tinubu’s victory.
“When Atiku came to my office in Ikeja, he came with Gbenga Daniel, my former governor. I said to him listen is about the time you people left the stage. Why don’t you just go away? We need an infusion of fresh blood into the system,” Soyinka said.
“For some people, maybe they read it as blood-letting, no I said, an infusion of fresh blood. I said so I cannot support you. I think your generation should really quit. He was not the only one. I then sought out the current President-elect, Ahmed Bola Tinubu, and I gave him exactly the same message.
“I said whatever you people are planning, I am convinced that when a younger generation, new thinking, new sensibility, new energies, so why don’t you just leave the seat.
“Let’s look for somebody who is a really brilliant individual and use your influence to catapult that person to power. And this country will see a massive transformation.
“We spoke for about one and a half hours, and then Bola Tinubu said no. He said there were still things he could contribute,” Soyinka added.
Soyinka also criticised the statements made by the Vice Presidential candidate of the Labour Party while on ChannelsTV Politics today as being fascistic in tone and principles.
The statement, said the Professor of Comparative Literature, was disrespectful to the role of the judiciary in the democratic setting. Nobody should believe that they can either dictate or intimidate the judiciary to toe their person conviction.
Specifically, Soyinka said Baba-Ahmed’s statement in the March 22 programme, calling on President Buhari and the Chief Justice not to swear in Bola Tinubu, whom INEC declared as the president-elect, tended to intimidate the judiciary . such attitude, Soyinka said is likely to throw the entire 24-year-old democratic dispensation on a tailspin, which would not augur well for anyone or the country itself.
Taking time out of the crux of the interview, Soyinka also decried the danger poised by Fake News, which now seems on rampage in the nation’s pubic discourse. He lamented that he had been a serial victim of fake attributions in the media, especially social media. He thus offered $1000 for anyone who could trace any of the attributions affixed to his name to him.
His critique of Baba Ahmed’s statement and posture was in tandem with an earlier statement he had issued on Tuesday, April 4, where he upbraided the media to show greater sense of responsibility in the performance of their job.
In the statement, Soyinka asserted:
“I 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. 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?
‘’This prejudicial selectivity is a betrayal of trust, and I find it contemptuous of public deserving. My critique of incipient fascism in the movement remains grounded in indisputable evidence. Throughout the interview, I continued to stress that the final word had yet to be pronounced on the elections – that omission renders the full message tendentious!
‘’My rejection of fascism is nothing new. On three occasions, I was able to send a message to Peter Obi that, if he lost the election, it would be his followers who lost it for him. 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?”
Soyinka concluded the statement thus:
‘’On a minor note, I remain concerned by the alleged complaint by me of people not following “instructions”. If words are garbled in recording, the speaker can be reached for clarification – else, simply leave out the unclear section completely to avoid misrepresentation. After all, piecemeal transmission is legitimate proceeding, as long as a part is not presented as the whole. I am not a member of the Labour Party, so how can giving ‘instructions’ become my role? 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.
‘’I hope CHANNELS plans to provide the entire interview. After months of having to endure total fabrications of partisan utterances that are strange to me, even in their very choice of words, it is most aggravating to have this, the first I have conceded in my authenticated person, casually subjected to selective editing and dissemination.
‘’Let us play by the rules of mutual obligation, or else abandon public discourse altogether.”
