Follow Us on Google
Except, perhaps, for the fact that he felt compelled to identify with certain benefactors trapped in the suffocating miasmal environment of Nigeria’s politics of the moment, it is difficult to understand why Professor Wole Soyinka deemed it appropriate at this juncture to insert himself in the mess of the 2023 elections.
No less intriguing is his manner of entry. For a man who has worked all his life on scripts, this very script is poorly written. But then, if, as already noted, there is a sense of obligation to stand up to be counted, every other consideration assumes secondary value. In such a situation, good judgment becomes expendable.
Soyinka’s challenge to Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, vice-presidential candidate of the Labour Party, to come out and face him in a debate is, for one, baffling. Debate him at this point in time, on what grounds? And to what purpose? As two vice-presidential candidates from two contending political parties? Or as two political party chieftains with conflicting ideologies? Or as what?
The response of the Labour Party that Baba Ahmed is ready to debate, not with Soyinka, but with his preferred presidential candidate or the vice, was not only apt but creative. The LP riposte removed the veil of non-partisanship, which the Nobel laureate tried to wear, as he dabbled in the raging post-election disputations.
The immediate question that the Soyinka midday emergence threw up has been: where has he been in the last one year or indeed eight years? The Nobel laureate has a voice that is heard far and wide. How and why was his voice never heard through the pre-election debate on the character and record of the presidential candidates? Could it be that he did not care at that point about issues of character, corruption and despoilation of Nigeria, which were loudly raised about some of the candidates? Then there were the criminal cases of ethnic chauvinism, outright violence and voter suppression during the elections. Soyinka remained silent all through these assaults on the fabric of justice in the society. Does the man no longer die who keeps silent in the face of tyranny? And injustice? Now, he is up and about, wrapping his actual goal in colourful verses.
The major charge levied by Soyinka against Obidients, as the predominantly-youth adherents of the Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, are known, is that they are intolerant of criticisms and counter opinions. This charge provides the professor a smart entry for the job he set out to do. The way the charge against Obidients was presented, the offence of intolerance to criticism is far more grievous than robbery, election rigging, grabbing power and running with it, corruption and disenfranchisement of citizens.
The reality that what roused the well-known social conscience of Soyinka about the 2023 elections was not the numerous assaults on citizens rights but rather the intolerance of criticisms by Obidients should be a matter of concern about the professor at the moment. Going by his present disposition, the greatest threat to democracy and social harmony in Nigerian society can be located in the insufferable intolerance to criticism by the youths, or Obidients. Luckily, the professor has an antidote to the menace: label them, rubbish them and, possibly, silence them. He promptly set off with labelling Obidients fascists.
As it turns out, interestingly, Obidients are not only impatient, they are irrepressible as well. They came prepared to confront contradictions and vicious conspiracies of the old order that have held them down for years. Obidients do not seem to have apologies for their intolerance of decadent views that are couched in sophistry.
In the days after Soyinka hurtled into the post-2023 political arena with his rather harsh and surprising attack on Obidients for not keeping quiet, the response from the tribe has been sharp and in equal measure. The young citizens may have been taken aback by the missile from Soyinka but it is obvious they are not fazed. They even have history on their side and against Soyinka in his curious about-turn.
In one of the early reactions to Soyinka labelling Obidients fascists for refusing to be cowed or distracted from their march to a new society, Mr. Ade Daramola insisted that, “He (Soyinka) cannot have an opinion and say we shouldn’t have an opinion about his opinion…Kongi (Soyinka) is not infallible…It is ridiculous for him to leave the criminality that was perpetrated during elections and suddenly have an opinion now. If he was silent then he should stay silent now.”
Other reactions soon followed, all articulating why Soyinka should be the last person to call out young Nigerians for rejecting electoral banditry in the 2023 polls.
“Do older Nigerians think we (younger ones) don’t read their history?” Tosin Adeoti rhetorically asked. He proceeded to provide a historical account of what Soyinka did in response to an election he considered stolen, many years back.
Then, in 1965, Oluwole Soyinka, this very professor, 31 years old, possibly the average age of Obidients, stormed a radio station in Ibadan and held a pistol to the head of a broadcaster who was about to broadcast the victory speech of a declared winner of the general election. In place of the victory speech, Soyinka forced a substitute tape on the broadcaster, at gunpoint. The new message read: “Akintola, go! Drop your stolen mandate, leave town and take your reprobates with you. Let them leave now before the people decide to wash the streets with their blood.”
Akintola, the prime minister of the Western Region, was already declared winner by the electoral commission, note. Soyinka was intolerant of what he considered a rigged election. His was not an act of terrorism. Nor was it fascist.
Over half a century later, precisely 56 years after, youths of Nigeria feel short-changed in an election in which they not only massively voted, but have ample cause to feel that their mandate was stolen. And who is castigating them for being intolerant? Wole Soyinka. The same Soyinka. He labels the youths fascists. Yet, Obidients have not gone halfway to pulling a gun. They are only intolerant of views they believe are designed to continue to mortgage their future.
At 88 years of age, Soyinka has not done himself any good by his cheerless act of challenging his own past and undermining the youth for a cause that holds no redemptive light. It is tragic that he will, for whatever consideration, undertake a rebuke of his past with scant deep thought for his legacy as a voice for public good and justice.
The obidient movement, in spite, of all odds, represents, at this moment, the clearest voluntary cohesive effort aimed at enthroning a new political and social order in troubled Nigeria. None of those young citizens, standing as one, across Nigeria, receive any pay or inducement to stand where they have elected to stand. They may not yet have a well-identified ideology, but in composition, they are unquestionably national. In orientation, they have risen above parochial cleavages and in texture, they have proved themselves reliable so far. Everything has been done to break their ranks, but they are holding on admirably.
The charge against obidients by Soyinka is a pretext. He needed justification to do what he had to do. As Tosin Adeoti asked, dispiritedly; ‘how can a country be built this way’?
