What Soyinka Failed to Say About Jonathan, Buhari

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What Soyinka Failed to Say About Jonathan, Buhari

By Correspondent

In a recent interview he granted Channels Television, Professor Wole Soyinka’s attempt at assessing the last general elections and the outcomes, where he praised the Buhari administration to high heavens and concluded dogmatically that Nigeria would have collapsed if former President Goodluck Jonathan had won the 2015 polls, muddled up his own public record and left our own W.S. punching below his weight. It simply showed that every star has its skyline, every sprinter has his track and every sage, his sphere. And for an intellectual, it becomes even more lethal, to venture into an unknown turf without the benefit of rigour and diligent research. If that happens, any attempt to dominate spaces clearly outside one’s scope, easily betrays the true motive of the intrusion. He will either be struggling to maintain his standing on a strange ground or be fighting piteously to cover up his predisposition. Granted that the interviewer overreached himself by taking Soyinka out of the familiar terrain of literature and art to demand of him, on the spot analysis of politics, even then the Nobel Laureate couldn’t have offended any soul if he had limited himself to the exercise of his God-given freedom of judgement where he had quickly expressed his fondness for President Muhammadu Buhari, over Jonathan. But it then became an act of hubris when Soyinka, apparently blinded by the bravura of his conviction, failed to rise to the occasion to dispassionately volunteer his views when challenged to assess the seven months of the Buhari administration, even after he had glibly put a nail on the possibility of Jonathan continuing in office, without giving credible reasons for his strange conclusions. While comparing the two presidential candidates for the 2015 elections, Soyinka said: “I became convinced that if this country underwent four more years under President Jonathan, the country would run aground completely.” Haba Professor! Where is the empirical evidence that supports such indiscreet generalization? Prodded on to justify his choice, amidst the worsening misery of the last six months and the dismal growth prognosis stemming from the new administration’s obvious lack of vision and economic direction, Soyinka simply affirmed that “Buhari’s performance in office so far has proven that there is such a thing as a born-again democrat.” And to think that this defence is coming not long after Soyinka described Buhari as a “devil for whom in my calculation, no spoon existed long enough to justify the risk even of an impromptu snack.”

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