Nobel Laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka, has slammed those criticising him for “installing” former military head of state, Muhammadu Buhari, as Nigeria’s President in 2015.
The octogenarian spoke on Channels Television’s NewsNight, a pre-recorded interview aired on Monday.
“When people talk about Wole Soyinka installing Buhari, they are talking rubbish; they don’t know what they are talking about. They are talking from ignorance. When I think of the governed themselves, I asked myself, ‘What am I doing among these people that they don’t understand that if somebody misrules, you have a right to tell people not to vote for him?’ And it is their business after that who they vote for but they have the option of spoiling their votes.
“So, when I hear Wole Soyinka was the one who installed Buhari and he should apologise to the nation, I say, ‘Your parents should apologise to the world for inflicting morons like you on the world.’”
The foremost playwright said the accumulation of negativity from the governing and the governed sometimes makes him stay away from commenting on governance.
In 2015, shortly after Buhari defeated then President Goodluck Jonathan who sought re-election, Soyinka had explained his stand between Buhari and Jonathan in the buildup to the presidential election that year.
Soyinka told his audience at the Havard University Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, that Buhari was a more difficult option for him being a former military dictator than having his fellow lecturer, Goodluck Jonathan continue as President.
The distinguished dramatist had said it was a “painful decision to tell people to vote Buhari, but the country needed a new beginning”.
Buhari will later win re-election in 2019 but Soyinka has since been one of his fiercest critics of the worsening security situation of the country. In 2020, Soyinka claimed Buhari was not in charge of Nigeria.