Wole Soyinka, foremost
playwright, says he will not support presidential candidates of either of the
two major parties.
He said this at an ongoing
interactive session tagged citizen forum 2019.
“It is time for a totally new
direction, and when an alternative emerges, we will give the candidate our
backing,” he said.
President Muhammadu Buhari of the
All Progressives Congress and former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar of the
Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) are the two leading candidates.
The octogenarian said it is time
to change the direction of the country in a positive way.
“For the avoidance of doubt, let
me make my position quite clear because I don’t want any ambiguity; I Wole
Soyinka will not be voting for either the two so called contesting parties. I
find both of them worthy of absolute rejection,” he said.
“For a number of reasons which I
will not go into here, I’m not interested in a comparative assessment. My
position is simply that it is time for a totally new direction. And obviously,
I’m not the only one, as I’m speaking, there is a coalition having its meeting
in Lagos from which they hope to produce a consensus candidate.
“There is another group meeting
in Abuja, also at the end would send us their consensus candidate. Things have
been going on quietly in the background to try and change the direction of this
nation in a very positive way, and to make the public understand that they do
not have to be enslaved permanently to the old discredited order. It is my sole
business in this election.
“I don’t believe in what is
called negative vote which means, for me, throwing your vote in a waste basket,
I believe instead in a creative vote, not a protest vote, not a negative vote
but a creative vote. And a creative vote means that the will to at least sow a
seed through your vote that will germinate eventually. The pace of germination
is beyond the control of everyone, but it is never too early to make a
beginning. It has happened before in other societies. When a dark horse emerges
from nowhere and trumps all the political juggernauts caterpillars and so on
with their performers, worthless, their capacity for violence and treachery.”
He added that the reason they are
yet to arrive at a consensus candidate was because the supposed genuine third
force was hijacked.
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