As a concerned member of the Nigerian public, I can not but condemn in totality, the new kid on the block slur used by Wole Soyinka, the octogenarian who should know better. Except one of the syndromes associated with gerontology has set in, one expects a reasonable display of civility by the Nobel laureate. To describe a former Governor who served meritoriously as the new kid on the block is satirical. The EFCC boss said they are still looking into his records, and so far, have found nothing incriminating about him while in office. He should realize that he is not talking to students in a drama class, but to Nigerians. Therefore, it behooves him to weigh his words before using them. To say the least, I don’t expect him to descend into the opprobrium of indecency to castigate Peter Obi in a ploy to instigate unwary members of the public against him.
In my tongue, it is said that “anyone wey shame dey catch no dey talk for the public when him yansh dey smell”. Wole Soyinka has a ‘smelling yansh’. “He who comes into equity must come with clean hands”. This doctrine requires the court to deny equitable relief to a party who has violated good faith concerning the subject of the claim. The court of public opinion should have no regard for Wole Soyinka’s claims about Datti’s utterances.
Sometimes, I wonder how people manage to garner the confidence and courage to stand in the public space and criticize others when they also have skeletons in their cupboards. Well, such is the way of unrepentant sinners whose consciences have been seared with a hot iron. They are past feelings. They try to remove specks from the eyes of others when they have logs in their own eyes.
I have come to realize by personal observation that education does not bring decorum or civility; but the fear of God, and an unalloyed love for others is what will make a man’s learning to count before God and man.
He is one of the most audacious people I have known. Unrepentantly, he pokes his nose into national issues while wearing the toga of a sinless saint and judge who must reprimand errant members of the public for something which he considers offensive once it negates his conviction as if he isn’t a major contributory factor to the ills of our society.
When Wole Soyinka decided to organize a yearly colloquium for BAT, and openly pitched his tent with the former’s political drives, he became involved in partisan politics, and that is despite the fascist demeanor of his principal and a plethora of accusations hanging around his neck like an albatross. For that reason, any reasonable person is wont to believe that his utterances against the opposition are mere political vituperations from one whose interest is at stake. I am surprised that Saint Wole Soyinka could allow his hallowed colloquium to be replaced by prayer, the same thing he publicly denounced on the 15th of April, 2014, during Jonathan’s tenure, when he said; ” prayer cannot solve Nigeria’s problems”.
We watched with bated hope to see Wole Soyinka transfer the same venom of antagonism which he used with clinical execution against Goodluck Jonathan to the administration of Buhari. For almost eight (8) years, he was placed in mute mode, I suppose by some powers that are beyond him, and I sympathize with him on this. But those powers suddenly removed their leash the moment Datti began to say things that contradicts his convictions.
“In a feat of acerbic verbal tantrums, Nobel Laureate Professor Wole Soyinka Tuesday, December 2, attacked President Goodluck Jonathan and likened the Nigerian leader to Nebuchadnezzar the biblical autocrat and king of Babylon who initially denounced the Living Supreme God.” (11 Dec. 2014, Vanguard). The above statement is the opening paragraph of the article which was written to denounce Saint Wole Soyinka’s undue criticism of Jonathan Goodluck. It characterized his idiosyncratic manner of talking down at the President of his country. Now that his principal has become President-elect, he will have a lot of defending to do because the law of karma will surely come to play.
I was surprised to note that he acknowledged that there is a true living God when trying to denounce Jonathan. It’s only when they want to employ the use of literary devices that the Wole Soyinkas of this world pretend to know the true living God because their lifestyles depict the contrary.
Sane-minded people would naturally expect him to throw the same venom at Buhari’s government which is worse than that of Jonathan Goodluck. For example, as far as he is concerned, nothing was amiss when he heard of all the snakes and crocodiles swallowing money during Buhari’s regime of impunity, inanity, fascism, and nepotism. But, no he wouldn’t.
The writer went further to confirm my opinions of Wole Soyinka in his second paragraph. “The respected professor of dramatic literature who is biased in his recent pronouncements given his current alignment with top leaders of the opposition political party, the All Progressives Congress (APC) said so many unprintable things against the administration of President Jonathan.”
If Wole Soyinka had behaved and lived well, sane-minded people will not deem his word not to amount to a pinch of salt.
The same man who established Pirates confraternity as a youth, under the guise of combating the oppressive acts and evils of the government of that day said nothing over the massacre of youths during the EndSARS protest, primarily because he was afraid it will jeopardize the chances of his principal in the 2023 elections. This is hypocrisy on display. As an alumnus of O.A.U Ile-Ife where he once lectured, I heard of how he used to rally students to go on protests which my alma mater became notorious for. His sudden silence or neutrality is questionable. Perhaps, he has now become born-again, an experience that he used to mock and frown at. We are still grappling with the effects of his negative contributions to the Nigerian situation as the pirate fraternity, which happens to be one of the creations of his ingenuity has not only become a menace to the tertiary institutions but the larger society.
By the way, the new kid on the block represents the embodiment of the hopes and aspirations of sane Nigerians. The emergence of this new kid shows that Nigerians, especially youths, have awoken from their deep slumber. The new kid is a new ideology that beats the imagination and expectations of the old brigade and the likes of Wole Soyinka because of its quick incursion of uncharted terrains in our sociopolitical space with a strange ideology of ‘I no dey give shishi’ which to the surprise and chagrin of the political Goliaths was well lauded by majority of Nigerians. Wole Soyinka did not only insult Peter Obi, but also the sensitivities and sensibilities of the average Nigerian whose only desire is the establishment of reasonable and responsible citizen-centered governance in the country.
But unfortunately for him, and his likes, it is too late to cry wolf; the train has moved. Even though I know that old habits die hard and that the leopard does not change its dark spots, I will still counsel Grandpa Wole Soyinka to stylishly retract, recant, or rephrase what he said about Peter Obi in a way that will appeal to our sensibilities and sensitivities, and in equal measure, earn him the respect of all and sundry.
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