Nemesis Catching Up With Gov Daniel

Professor Wole Soyinka, the Nobel Laureate, spoke with ADEMOLA ADEGBAMIGBE on the current elections and other issues

How do you view the conflict between Governor Gbenga and his godfather, former president, Olusegun Obasanjo?
It is nemesis catching up with both of them. What happened at that town hall meeting, to me, was a contemptible act of self-exposure, because what Daniel elebo (ritualist), as I have heard the Ogun State governor called in one or two places, did prove to the whole world what people have been saying all along. Nothing of it surprised me. He doesn’t know that there is something called the chickens coming home to roost. Ori agba le die (there is a repercussion for offending an elder). And that is only the beginning of his punishment. It is good for him and his mentor.

The elections have begun. Are you apprehensive over thuggery, violence, anarchy?
What is apprehension? It’s already happening; that is the reality. While on the one hand I am very distressed and disappointed, I have to say it is inevitable. We need to punish those who are responsible for what is happening. The society needs to show them that when they are put in positions of power and trust, they don’t debase their fellow citizens and don’t resort to extra-legal means to stay in power. You don’t utter words of incitement or expression, which has become the currency of this nation. You shouldn’t expect that if you pull down the edifice which you are sworn to maintain – your oath of office is to uphold that edifice called democracy, whether you talk about it in abstract or palpable terms. You don’t act in a way that would erode the foundation of that edifice. That is number one.
Number two, and even more confounding, what sort of system are we running? When there is violence, you ask yourself, what is at stake? Money, of course! You are already signalling what you intend to do when you get there and the extent which you will go in order to sustain yourself  in that undeserved position. The system that we run in this country makes the stakes so high. To summarise it, why do we need full-time legislators in this country and why not part-time legislators?
Far more advanced countries practise that form of law-making of electoral representation, that is, part-time law-making. This question has come up again and again. Now, not only are the legislators earning inordinate allowances, their overheads, as emphasised by the Governor of Central Bank, Lamido Sanusi, are too big. Their allowances – and their take-home pay generally – are grotesque. It is an insult to the nation, it is an insult to the ordinary citizen and it is an insult to anything you might call a democratic system.
And what did they do when they realised that voices were beginning to well up, decrying and denouncing this anomaly? They took it off, they took their emoluments away from a particular heading under their control, so that even if you elect an Executive of the status of a President who recognises the iniquity of these allowances, it would no longer be under his control.
That is what many people who are involved look at when they get there – that they would earn this disproportionate standard of existence. So, it is both the precedent of where we are today as well as the horizon to which those who are involved can go. This is the deadly combination of that condition.

In 1983, you waxed a record Etike revo wetin to sensitise the electorate to the hypocrisy attending then president, Shehu Shagari’s Ethical Revolution launch. What informed your launch last week of a website to monitor the current elections?
What interests me right now is to let people understand their interests. When I see people being humiliated, then I am humiliated because I don’t like people to be humiliated. When I see a constituency being treated with disdain and utter contempt, I feel I am part of that. We have always been treated with contempt. I am a citizen of Ogun State.
Look at what is happening at the Ogun State House of Assembly. Many of them rigged themselves in, but that is not the issue. The Assembly has been locked up illegally for nearly six months and it looks likely to continue till after the elections. This is an illegality, a slap on the face of every citizen – man, woman, child, old and young, myself included, in Ogun State.
One sometimes wonders what other people are made of. Don’t they feel this sense of humiliation? How can they accept this act of contempt from an ordinary mediocre citizen who was rigged into office to preside on their affairs? I think, critically, my problem is that I have the genes of a teacher (the son of a headmaster). I think I have a compulsion to teach. It is a citizen’s responsibility. I have not quite thought it out myself. Why did I form, for instance, a political party or rather, why did I back those who wanted to form a political party? I did so because I saw in it a possible instrument of gradual transformation of human beings. It is letting people know that there are many ways to skin a cat; it doesn’t have to be through violence. It is to make them question the system, it is not to encourage them to be part of the system. It is to let them see this as an additional way to effect a change. It is to encourage them to insert a thin wedge in the rotten system, which will widen the aperture for others of like minds to form their own party or group for the salvation of their own dignity.
I don’t have to sit among people who are less than human. I would rather be happier to be in the forest, at least, doing my usual hunting there. I don’t feel personally involved with life in the bush beyond trying to put animals in the cooking pot. I sometimes like to define my own motivations. The only way I can sum it up is that I like to be among human beings and human beings, to me, are defined only by expression and demonstration of self-worth and by assertion of their own dignity.

Many still commend your calmness at the Ake Town Hall meet in the face of intense provocation by miscreants, touts and thugs. How did that affect the objectives of the meet?
I saw what happened at the town hall meeting in Ake as an exercise in self-exposure by Daniel, the governor of that state. What happened was clear and did not require any further comment from me. It was quite clear. You saw two groups of Daniel-paid thugs, some nicely dressed, but it was clear what they were anyway. They were people whom in many ways I pity as thugs. I don’t often feel superior to people, but I think I was on that day. I just saw myself as infinitely superior to the minions of Daniel. And we have a proverb in Yoruba, which says ‘ti won ba ran eniyan ni ise eru, a fi ti omo je’ (a knotty message requires diplomacy). And the servants of the governor who were there on that day proved themselves not only omo eru (slaves) but incapable of transcending the ranking they have been given by their paymaster.
Also, I had made up my mind from the beginning that it was a very poorly schooled individual behind it, who needed to be taught freedom of expression in many avenues. I sent a message to him (Daniel) afterwards that ‘he wants immortality’ but I will immortalise him. I have sort of gone outside to the environment even though I was trying to keep in control of the environment. I see those people as zombies. A number of times, I was tempted to call in the police to say end of meeting. But I was determined that the meeting would hold until I was ready to end it. Every single rubbish that was said by some of those people was a comment, a self-exposure of Governor Daniel and what he is doing?

What is your advice to Attahiru Jega, the INEC chairman, on the current elections?
My confidence in Jega stems from an objective, rational assessment. He will exact 120 per cent to make the elections a success. If he fails, I think Nigerians have serious questions to ask of themselves. So, they should not complain if the alternative scenario comes. I believe people are moving to the very end of their tether. If this exercise fails, the repercussion will be complicated. People say Egypt cannot happen here, Libya cannot happen here, Bahrain cannot happen here, but they should understand that the world is changing. Even though many people feel democracy is just an abstraction, freedom is just an abstraction, they are ready to make sacrifices for the sustenance of that abstraction. Many people believe religion is an abstraction, yet you see people ready to kill and die for such an improbable abstraction. Freedom, very much likely, may be an abstraction but, historically, time and time again, people have proven that it is abstraction that defines them as human beings.

Could you set an agenda for whoever becomes president?
It’s very simple. I refer to the Democratic Front  for People’s Federation, DFPF. If you want to see where the candidates are, well, you will have to use a microscope to look at the list of people there. But they are the people who have decided to undergo the hardship to set an example wherever they are. So, we come back ultimately to the manifesto.
I am part and parcel and, very much of course, at the centre of making of the manifesto. Instead of talking about roads, corruption, employment, education, infrastructure etc, I will just say that such president should educate himself by studying that manifesto. The emerging President should direct himself and be seen to direct himself towards fulfilling at least 50 per cent of the provisions of that manifesto. To put it bare, the emerging President should have a cohesive and comprehensive view of what the society can be like if certain policies and goals are put in place.

Is the police right to ban phones and cameras at polling stations?
I am infuriated. I just wonder what some people use for a head! How can you say that in a democratic process, you are against instruments which can actually be used to open that process and make it accessible to people who are not on the spot during the voting? How dare you say you will bar such instruments? It’s madness. I don’t understand. Do these people just wake up, put on their uniforms, I mean those at the top level, and say: ‘How can I shock society today?’ Or ‘how can I annoy the community today?’ Or ‘how can I confuse the electorate?’ I don’t understand this at all. It is good the chairman of INEC quickly contradicted him, saying on the contrary: “Bring space cameras if you like”, which is the way it should be.

There was a presidential debate organised recently, which President Goodluck Jonathan failed to attend. What is your take on this?
I don’t know what happened in his (Jonathan) camp and I don’t know who his advisers are but I think that was a mistake. I have my doubt about the presidential debate because sometimes it is the wittiest person, a more sharp-tongued person, a better liar, semanticist, that often seems likely to triumph. I have always had my doubts about debates. But if you are in a system where such a method is accepted and you refused to participate, then you had better have ways of compensating for your absence, because you will be put down quite legitimately that you are afraid of debate. So, I think President Jonathan made a mistake by not attending.

Recently, Bode George was released from prison and given a rousing welcome, as if it was Julius Caesar entering Rome after defeating Pompey. What is your view on that?
People ask why there is such an escalation of armed robbery, degenerating human honour, unconscionable kidnapping of innocent people and try to seek an understanding of that phenomenon. Nigerians are notorious copycats. If someone does 419, before you know what is going on everybody is already doing it. It’s like a business person or a trader setting up a stall where he sells akara or moinmoin and Nigerians around see that person is making some money, then they follow suit. They won’t even go some distance to clutter up the clientele; no, they just go into it direct. There is this kind of national characteristic which has developed over the years. Not one single moment do I extenuate all the violence in the country.
I believe that people who indulge in crime do not belong to society to start with. But then you are compelled, as an analyst of society, to go deeper to see what really makes the so-called intelligent and respectable people take to such nefarious activities. Well, when they see criminality being glorified at the very top level, like that kind of ostentatious welcome for a convicted felon, that is part of what contributes to the debasement of our society.

Former president, Olusegun Obasanjo knew that George was a baggage and he had to condemn him…
Well, if you remember, after nearly bankrupting Nigerian treasury with Ghana-must-go bags for his third term endeavour, do you remember what he said? He said: ‘I never wanted it in the first place anyway.’ He said: ‘When did I say I wanted it?’ But I happen to know the members of the task force he set up to get him his third term. You see, what was impossible to know is how much was actually spent. But in terms of a concerted, programmed misadventure, funded lavishly, a misadventure which resulted in the pushing of those who opposed the third term gamble by the master rigger (Obasanjo), a number of them were rigged out of positions simply because they opposed the third term and we know that it was a centrally controlled rigging in that particular election. That is why we are monitoring a number of things, including what was given to the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, officials.
Edo State, of course, was a notorious example where a notorious supporter of third term agenda had to be rewarded at all cost, because he had been one of the backbones of third term agenda and then at the end of it, this shameless old man said “I never wanted it in the first place.” It was the most pitiable, pathetic, self-exonerating lie I have ever encountered. It makes one feel ashamed of belonging to the polity that can produce that kind of a so-called leader.
So, why should it surprise anyone that after having realised that he may have committed another blunder, he then did say, “I just didn’t know, I thought it was just a family affair.”

–Culled From TheNews Magazine