Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka has called out former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, accusing the elder statesman of posturing.
The playwright made these comments at the 80th posthumous birthday for Chief Gani Fawehinmi (SAN).
In a lecture themed “Democracy for the masses through proper and effective governance.”, Soyinka questioned the motives of those who looted Nigeria and are now bent on seeming like saviours or people with the nation’s best interests at heart.
He said; “All I want to say in connection with the title of today is just one word: vigilance….There is no question whatsoever that democracy is in danger.
“And so I find it ironic that those who’ve proved themselves the enemies of democracy who’ve really taken, they’ve really committed acts, not just negligence, but actually inaugurated certain policies which contributed to our being at this point again are once again coming out and positioning themselves as saviours, as messiahs, as the sole possible rescue mission that this nation can even dream of, a nation of nearly 200 million people.
“I find it very strange, and I find it even stranger because at the beginning of this movement towards ‘rescue mission’, there were one or two organisations that came out under different names and they had people in them whom I considered worth following, worth encouraging, worth encouraging others to study closely and even consider following.
“The next thing I knew, these movements were being hijacked by the very people who laid the foundation, an ironic word by the way, for the collapse of the democratic edifice.”
He also talked about how he turned down coalition groups that approached him to join them, “The next thing we know, they are forming coalitions and I was invited by one of the rescue missions to address them and I telephoned them and I asked the question, ‘wait a minute, which one are you? Are you the original people I saw or is there a faction or is there now a fatherly umbrella under which everybody is moving?’
“And I told them; don’t even come near me, if you’ve signed up on one of those who are the enemies of democracy in this nation.
“Those who inaugurated so-called constitutional amendment programmes, total charades, to assist them to continue to run, which has been scuttled by the direction known as tenure elongation, third term, etcetera for which the entire national treasury was almost bankrupted.”
He added; “And suddenly, here they are they are forming coalitions all over the place, once again, confusing people.
“Who are the genuine leaders, who are those that we can trust? The answer to that is very simple: look at their track records. That’s all”.