6th May, 2015
Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka has denied comments attributed to him concerning the voting pattern of the Igbo in the 28 March presidential election.
The report, published by TheCable, alleged that he accused the Igbo of voting according to their “stomachs”.
In his response to the story, Soyinka said in a statement: “I have just read a statement attributed to me on something called The CABLE, a news outlet, evidently one of the Internet infestations. My lecture at the Hutchins Centre, Harvard University, was video recorded.
“Anyone who believes what I am alleged to have said must be a moron – repeat, a moron. It is demeaning, sickening and boring to have to deal with these cowards who cannot fight their own battles but must fasten their imbecilic pronouncements on others.
“Only the mentally retarded will credit this comment attributed to me regarding the Ndigbo voting pattern in the last elections. I strongly suspect the author of this despicable concoction, and may make a further statement, once the source is verified.”
Delivering a lecture titled ‘Predicting Nigeria, Electoral Ironies’ at the Harvard University Hutchins Centre for African & African American Research, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, the revered scholar said the re-election of President Goodluck Jonathan would have been “disastrous”, as Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s president-elect, is better option.
“Muhammadu Buhari was the better of the two evils as the incumbent president Goodluck Jonathan had been an unmitigated disaster and failure,” he said.
“It was a painful decision to tell people to vote Buhari, but the country needed a new beginning. I was more against Jonathan than I was pro-Buhari.
“Nothing is more unworthy of leadership than to degrade a system by which one attains fulfillment, and this is what the nation witnessed time and time again under Jonathan, who was increasingly becoming intolerant of opposition in an escalating streak of impunity and authoritarian madness which was most blatant and unconscionable.
“The ‘militricians’ – soldiers turned politicians in power – aren’t looking for excellence; their civilian cohorts are worse. Short cuts and how to circumvent the system for the profit of a few are the norm of governance. Those who do honest work are derided as lacking the skill to fit in. Ironically, things haven’t quite changed a bit after 16 years of democracy in the country.”
He added: “It will not be easy to enthrone democracy as the norm.”
Soyinka who has been labelled the conscience of Nigeria also told the Harvard audience that the ruthless Islamist religious fundamentalism is “the enemy of humanity.”
“We will never get rid of Boko Haram,” Soyinka said, when Hutchins Center’s director, Henry Louis Gates Jr., a former student, longtime friend and colleague of Soyinka asked him to expand on a remark that Boko Haram, and by extension the fundamentalist group ISIS, could create a complete redistribution of power and boundary lines in West Africa.
He described the jihadists who wish to impose Sharia law and ban Western learning across Nigeria as indoctrinated “fanatics who believe that if they die in the cause, they will go straight to heaven,” where they “believe literally in the 77 virgins awaiting their arrival.”
“They do not want to reason — they kill,” said the playwright and poet, urging vigorous international action against Islamist militant groups like Boko Haram, whose campaign of terror in northern Nigeria has included the kidnapping of thousands of women and girls.
“We’ve reached a state where there’s a party of life and a party of death,” he said, and those on the side of life must fight for their belief “as ruthlessly” as the foe they face.
Soyinka, a former political prisoner who became in 1986 the first black African to win the Nobel Prize in literature, spoke in the wake of a historic vote in Nigeria. In a general election at the end of March, opposition candidate Muhammadu Buhari, former military ruler of the country, prevailed over incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan by more than 2.7 million votes.
When Jonathan conceded defeat, it marked the first time an incumbent president had been voted from office via the ballot box in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, with the continent’s largest economy.
Soyinka, an outspoken campaigner for human rights and Nigeria’s pre-eminent public intellectual, was invited to give his perspective on the political landscape of a nation troubled by a history of military dictatorship, corruption, and civil strife.