Soyinka: Buhari was Better of Two Evils Anyaoku: Nigerians Owe Jonathan Gratitude
Nobel laureate describes Igbos as ‘predictable' and ‘greedy’
Two of Nigeria’s eminent personalities have given divergent prognoses on the just concluded 2015 elections, with Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, stating that he chose Major-General Muhammdu Buhari (rtd) over President Goodluck Jonathan because he was the “better of the two evils”.
In contrast, the Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Council on International Relations and former Commonwealth SecretaryGeneral, Chief Emeka Anyaoku yesterday said Nigerians owed Jonathan a debt of gratitude for his roles in the conduct of the
successful elections this year.
Soyinka, in his characteristically blunt manner, termed the outcome of the elections as a stark choice between a failed president and a former military dictator, saying Buhari was the better of the two evils as the incumbent president was an “unmitigated disaster and failure”.
Delivering a lecture titled, “Predicting Nigeria, Electoral Ironies”, at the Harvard University Hutchins Centre for African & African American Research, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, Soyinka also condescendingly described Nigerians of Igbo extraction as “predictable” and “greedy” following their choice to vote en masse for Jonathan in the just concluded general election.
Defending his support for the former military dictator, the foremost dramatist said on a personal level, it was a “painful decision to tell people to vote Buhari, but the country needed a new beginning. I was more against Jonathan, than I was pro-Buhari”.
He informed the sold-out audience that if the incumbent had been anything near competent, Buhari’s most “maladroit statement” about the dog and the baboon being soaked in blood, would have been enough to scuttle his presidential ambition for the fourth time.
“As the nation’s much talked-about centenary year ended, the 2015 elections offered Nigerians an opportunity to halt the nation’s descent into anarchy,” he said.
In Soyinka’s opinion, four more years of Jonathan would have seen Nigeria plummet further, “as the crawling giant of Africa, and the beggarly, weeping boy in the comity of nations”.
“In a country where one of the six zones that make up the federation was on the verge of excision, with millions of beleaguered citizens marooned in the North-east of the country; and thousands more cruelly murdered by insurgents, all Jonathan could offer was mollifying rhetoric and empty promises,” Soyinka said.
The Nobel laureate said that even as the nation was on the brink of perdition, a mesmerising state of perplexity seemed to envelope the seat of power.
“Nigeria is in a state of war, and the President, Commanderin-Chief must not only lead but be seen to lead the charge. The situation demanded exemplary leadership, which Jonathan could not provide; not because he was unaware of the problem, he was just at a loss for solutions. It is not for nothing that he (Jonathan) was called clueless,” Soyinka said amid derisive laughter.
Making references to the split in the Nigerian Governors’ Forum (NGF), Soyinka said Jonathan set the law of simple arithmetic on its head, adding that the president’s recognition of the minority after a straightforward, peer election, “rendered democracy meaningless where it should have been most fervently exemplified”.
“Nothing is more unworthy of leadership than to degrade a system by which one attains fulfillment, and this is what the nation witnessed time and time again under Jonathan, who increasingly becoming intolerant of opposition in an escalating streak of impunity and authoritarian madness, which was most blatant and unconscionable,” he said.
He said even after Jonathan personally confided in him (Soyinka) that he made a mistake by surrounding himself with the wrong people, “the president continued to surprise us in ways that very few could have conjectured”.
He condemned the appointment of former Ogun State governor, Gbenga Daniel, as Jonathan’s campaign manager in the South-west zone, describing Daniel’s action of locking out members of the state House of Assembly because the legislators refused to allow him borrow money as an infamy, observing that Jonathan must be held responsible for the increase in impunity in the nation that threatened to scuttle Nigeria’s hard-earned democracy.
Soyinka presented a grim picture, observing that he had lost faith in the Nigerian project: “The ‘militricians’ – soldiers turned politicians in power – aren’t looking for excellence; their civilian cohorts are worse. Short cuts and how to circumvent the system for the profit of a few are the norm of governance. Those who do honest work are derided as lacking the skill to fit it.
“Ironically, things haven’t quite changed a bit after 16 years of democracy in the country. How do you account for a society saddled with monsters strutting the national landscape as leaders? How do you counterbalance the national madness for the sanity of ordinary citizens trying to make sense of their lives?”