Wole Soyinka, Nobel laureate,
says his generation has failed the country.
Speaking on Hard Talk, a BBC
programme, the professor said the dreams people of his generation had about the
country had not materialised.
Zeinab Badawi, anchor of the
programme, had asked the literary scholar: “Has your generation of older
Nigerians failed the people?” and he responded, “Yes, I believe so.
“I compare today with dreams and
aspirations we had when we all rushed home after studies abroad. We considered
ourselves the renaissance people that are going to lift the continent to world
standards, competitors anywhere. It hasn’t happened.”
Asked to comment about the 2019
presidential election, he said: “The 2019 election is one of the most
depressing elections we’ve been through. Talking for myself, it wasn’t possible
for me to make a choice for the simple reason that both candidates (President
Muhammadu Buhari and Atiku Abubakar) both had histories— one immediate, one
past —which made one look for alternatives.”
He explained why he was soft on
Buhari in 2015 when he referred to the president as a born again democrat.
Soyinka said Buhari did not win
the 2015 election because the people were endeared to him but for the fact that
Nigerians could not continue with former President Goodluck Jonathan in office.
“General Buhari didn’t really win
the first election, he won by default. It was impossible to continue with
Jonathan (back in 2015),” he said.
“As it happened, yes, I did use
that expression ‘born again democrat’. When somebody competes in an election
three, four times and persists, he must believe in democracy… the circumstances
in Nigeria, the fact that Nigerians have shown the military what a huge failure
they were makes it possible for one to identify the possibility of exceptions
when they seem to behave like democrats.
“But in any case, I kept
emphasising that Nigerians had a very difficult choice and as I said, It was
between the devil and the deep blue sea.”
Click to signup for FREE news updates, latest information and hottest gists everyday
Advertise on NigerianEye.com to reach thousands of our daily users
No comments
Post a Comment
Kindly drop a comment below.
(Comments are moderated. Clean comments will be approved immediately)
Advert Enquires - Reach out to us at NigerianEye@gmail.com