Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, has
criticised the two frontline candidates in the March 28 presidential
election, President Goodluck Jonathan of the Peoples Democratic Party
and Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.) of the All Progressives Congress.
Soyinka, in an interview with the BBC on
Monday, insisted that the political parties should have come up with
far better options than the two leading candidates.
He described President Jonathan, who is
running for a second term and the opposition leader, Buhari, as
“problematic candidates.”
“There is a huge albatross hanging
[around] the necks of the two main candidates. I can understand the
dilemma which many voters have,” Soyinka said.
He added that “one contender is troubled by the present, the other by the past.”
Soyinka also decried the lack of fair
play in the election, saying the spirit of “let’s have a fair war” was
not yet deep enough.
He faulted Jonathan for the failure to rescue the more than 200 schoolgirls abducted from Chibok in April 2014.
“What happened was a clear failure of leadership – a slow reaction, an inadequate reaction and response,” Soyinka told the BBC.
He stressed that while responsibility for the Boko Haram crisis rested
with President Jonathan, the government could not be held solely
responsible for the entire jihadist problem as it began under previous
governments.
“Buhari and his partner, the late Gen.
Tunde Idiagbon, after (former military head of state) Sani Abacha, I
think they represented the most brutal face of military dictatorship.
There is no question about that,” Soyinka said.
“But the environment changes,
circumstances change and… I look at the possibility of a genuine
internal transformation in some individuals. I’ve been disappointed
before and we must always be ready to be disappointed again,” he added.
Soyinka, however, said Nigerians should
be ready to “go back to the trenches stand up against misrule from
whoever wins the election.
“Nigerians should be prepared to deal
with any new betrayal by any ruler with the same passion and
commitment…. as they did with the late Sani Abacha because we cannot
continue this cycle of repetitious evil and irresponsibility.”
On what to do to counter the Boko Haram
sect, whose activities was cited for the postponement of the election,
Soyinka called for “an aerial bombardment with weapons of the mind” in
addition to the military offensive.
“All kinds of propaganda leaflets should
have been raining in those areas because not all members of Boko Haram
are convinced. They need to know there is an exit and the state will
take care of them. Then the waverers’ minds have to be reinforced on the
positive side – on the side of humanity.
“The kind of propaganda being used now
between the political parties, just a fraction of that should have gone
into attacking Boko Haram,” he added.
Asked whether he believed the nation
could be dismembered in the next 10 years, he said, “I doubt it very
much. The threats of dismemberment have been going on so long that one
of these days there is going to be a wish fulfilled.
“The idea of either dismembering at the
cost of human lives, as the Boko Haram people are trying to do with
their caliphate delusions or to force people to stay together as
happened in the case of the [1967-1970] Biafra war, doesn’t make sense,
it’s an abuse of intelligence.
“Arrangements can be made in which
people stick together under protocols of association which allow some
kind of autonomy for certain issues and other cases centralised
policies,” he said.
Soyinka also noted that the huge amount being expended on campaigns would inevitably lead to broken electoral promises.
“What does this make of the incoming
government? This money came in from somewhere. It means such candidates
are going to owe, they are obliged to interests which are not
necessarily in the best interests of the nation.
“So, a lot of the electorate will be
disappointed at the failure – the reneging on electoral promises –
because there may not be funds for the fulfilment of those promises,
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