A pro-democracy group, Coalition in Defence of Nigerian Democracy and Constitution (CDNDC) has asked Nigerians to be wary of Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, who it said has “sadly” sacrificed his hard-earned reputation and honour to sustain a despot in power.
Reacting to the latest outburst of Soyinka, who at a symposium organised by the BBC on fake news in Abuja on Wednesday, continued his attacks on former President Olusegun Obasanjo, the group appealed to him to stop worsening his own history.
CDNDC in a reaction made available by its Convener, Ariyo-Dare Atoye, said if the professor had been referring to a certain person for eight years as a “partner-in-crime” and in 2015 he claimed he made the gravest mistake of supporting a dictator, then for Soyinka’s continuous support of that same despotic regime, there was a reason for Nigerians to express some doubt over what he stood for decades ago.
The group paraphrased him saying , “We have got to develop a very healthy scepticism. If someone in a position as conscience of the nation for decades has lectured a nation for several years and after that continued year after year to continue to direct the minds of a whole nation in one direction only saying ‘this is dictator, a partner-in-crime” and then one day in 2015 and still counting, he changed his left hand and says behold your redeemer, which of the two is fake news?”
The playwright in 2007, said: “The grounds on which General Buhari is being promoted as the alternative choice are not only shaky, but pitifully naive. History matters. Records are not kept simply to assist the weakness of memory, but to operate as guides to the future. Of course, we know that human beings change.
“What the claims of personality change or transformation impose on us is a rigorous inspection of the evidence, not wishful speculation or behind-the-scenes assurances. Public offence, crimes against a polity, must be answered in the public space, not in caucuses of bargaining.
“In Buhari, we have been offered no evidence of the sheerest prospect of change. On the contrary, all evident suggests that this is one individual who remains convinced that this is one ex-ruler that the nation cannot call to order.”
The group said there was nothing under the heavens to justify the support Soyinka has been strategically rendering Buhari since 2015, even when he had to occasionally criticised him, while reminding the playwright that another history of him would be written after “the fading Buhari administration has long been consigned to the annals of ignominy.
“Every Nigerian should find time to read The Crimes of Buhari by Wole Soyinka, published in 2007 and makes a simple judgement wether the Prof was right in sacrificing his democratic credentials and reputations to support and sustain Buhari in power.
“Deji Adeyanju has been illegally detained in Kano prison by the Buhari-Osinbajo despotic regime for about a month now, Sambo Dasuki is a political prisoner held against court orders, Sheik Zakzaky is a prisoner of conscience, the vampiric shrine of Buhari’s government is soaked with the blood of innocent Nigerians, human rights and press freedom abuses are rife, while the entire country is sliding into hopelessness.
“If Professor Wole Soyinka cannot support or offer us any knowledge on how to get out of this mess, we are of the opinion that he should not distract us or those who are trying to help the country to get out of the 2015 quagmire he help drive us into.”
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