Soyinka is always right

Biko Agozino

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May 25, 2024, 6:55:10 AM5/25/24

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Obi unfit to lead Nigeria, says Soyinka https://punchng.com/obi-unfit-to-lead-nigeria-says-soyinka/ Baba Sho done old now but he is right to suggest that LP must be better organized to stand a better chance of leading the country in the future. See my earlier blog post: Soyinka Is Right

Soyinka Is Right

Soyinka Is Right In a Sense By Onwubiko Agozino Do you agree with anything or everything that Wole Soyinka sa...

Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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May 25, 2024, 3:52:24 PM5/25/24

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Really?

Soyinka is always right?

In which universe?

Soyinka may have a point in this instance, but as essentially a politician, a man of shifting ideologies and loyalties, he should be taken with a grain of salt where Nigerian politics is concerned.

In supporting Buhari in 2015, he conveniently forgot Buhari's not reigning in his minions as they committed a massacre in the Muslim North in revenge for his 2011 electoral loss, Buhari's politicization of Boko Haram, Buhari's " dog and the baboon shall be bathed in blood" threat if he did not win the 2015 elections, Soyinka putting aside all this as he jettisoned his earlier declaration of why Buhari is unfit to rule in "The Trouble with Buhari".

Soyinka is a problematic platform to use in a serious and objective analysis of Nigerian politics.

Using him in such a manner requires careful qualification of the position being employed.

He's a great writer but an unreliable political figure.

Your article is more nuanced than the title of this post. I wonder why.

Thanks

Toyin

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Biko Agozino

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May 25, 2024, 11:16:12 PM5/25/24

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The always refers to his expertise as a creative writer with truthful lies (apologies to BJ). Bearing in mind that he expects to be read at different levels of interpretation, we should not be too literal. Here is my response to a comment on Linkedin:

I think that journalists should ask him directly to comment on the other characters. Personally, I believe that Prof is disappointed that Obi did not win the election as declared and may be wishing that LP should do better next time by organizing better now.

Biko

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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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May 26, 2024, 4:30:18 AM5/26/24

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Soyinka is a great writer, at different levels of accessibility, in poetry, the essay, drama and autobiography

His greatest works span both the recondite and the simple, from the sophistication of his autobiographical The Man Died to the lucid potency of his Signposts of Existence poem.

Soyinka is also an APC enabler, whose activities were strategic to the empowerment of APC on account of his open feud with GEJ's wife, his open affiliation with Amaechi, one of the founders of APC, his open disparagement of GEJ after visiting him in the closing times of GEJ's tenure and his publicised visit to Buhari after Buhari came to power and Soyinka's Harvard speech referencing how he and others removed GEJ though a (former?) dictator, Buhari.

The difference between the Tinubu/Buhari axis and what Obi represents, as different from the excesses of his adherents, is too stark for me to see Soyinka as having any interest in Obi.

I also suspect that Achebe's last essay and book were turning points for some SW intelligentsia, who responded to Achebe's thesis of Nigeria against Ndigbo with a pivot from the SS/SE matrix to affiliation with the Muslim North, a development perhaps assisted by the perception of GEJ as not adequately positioning the SW in his cabinet.

Thanks

Toyin

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Chika Okeke-Agulu

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May 27, 2024, 2:32:55 AM5/27/24

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The great writer, sadly, reminds me of the proverbial fellow who chases after rats while the homestead burns. With all the disastrous circumstances facing Nigeria under this present government, the old man seems particularly preoccupied with the internet manners of Obidients, as if that is Nigeria's most urgent problem. I wished he directed his ire to the drunk drivers of our careening national bus. About our politics, he is, in fact, rarely right.

Ayoola Tokunbo

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May 27, 2024, 2:32:55 AM5/27/24

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How is Soyinka an APC enabler?

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com>
Sent: 26 May 2024 08:09
To: usaafricadialogue <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Soyinka is always right

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Oluwatoyin Adepoju

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May 27, 2024, 3:52:37 AM5/27/24

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I have explained in my last post why Soyinka is an APC enabler.

I am happy to discuss the points I made with anyone who sees differently.

Soyinka is one of the enablers of the disaster of Buhari although the hand writing was clear on the wall about what Buhari stands for.

A formidable force of the political class and some Nigerian intelligentsia were arrayed against GEJ.

They eventually chose Buhari as their champion bcs of his traction in the Muslim North which was sure to bring votes.

My problem with people like Soyinka and Pius Adesanmi, another telling example of how former Buhari critics lined up behind him to enable his 2015 victory, is that its one thing to want to replace GEJ but why should you support doing that using Buhari, a leopard whose spots have never changed?

Was the choice of Buhari by his former trenchant critics Tinubu, who milked that support for Buhari to enable his own victorious Presidential bid in 2023, and Soyinka, who gave support, not simply an act of cold hearted political calculation?

Soyinka may be described as unusually well informed about Nigerian politics although what he does with the information is controversial.

Well before the escalation of Fulani militia terrorism in Buhari's tenure, Soyinka had cried out about the dropping of weapons on nomadic cattle routes, the routes eventually used by violent Fulani herdsmen and their Fulani militia army in wreaking unprecedented havoc nationwide during Buhari's tenure.

Soyinka was the first to reference the possiblity of the 2011 Boko Haram escalation as the work of disgruntled politicians, well before National Security Adviser Andrew Azazi did the same thing, and shortly after died in what might not be an accidental helicopter crash.

Soyinka's efforts against the earlier Buhari and Abacha dictatorships can't be forgotten. He wrote and published "The Trouble with Buhari", the most trenchant anti-Buhari assessment before its overturning by his support for Buhari in 2015.

Soyinka was active against Abacha in the midst of the dictator's assassination policy which silenced almost everyone.

If he had not fled into exile during Abacha, the dictator might have finished him. From exile, he put pressure on the govt.

His role in Babangida's govt may be seen as controversial, as he accepted an appointment from the general who came to power through a coup, helping to legitimize that govt, as he described those opposed to what he described as trying to effect change from within as "disco critics", perpetually criticizing in the frenetic manner of disco dancers, from what I recall.

Even then, he created an organization, the Road Safety Corps, which may be examined for its effect on Nigeria's generational road problems.

Soyinka's account, in The Man Died, of the horror of the anti-Igbo pogrom that eventually ignited the civil war is deeply moving.

I dont understand his role in the civil war since I seem to have read him describing himself as trying to form a Third Force to prevent sales of arms to either side, but his The Man Died suggests identification with the aspirations of the Biafran side in its annexation of the Midwest, the book lamenting what Soyinka describes as Victor Banjo's delay in the Midwest before moving to his planned annexation of the SW, enabling federal troops converge at Ore and defeat the Biafran army in a rout that may be described as the beginning of the end for that cycle of the Biafran vision, a defeat from which Biafra never recovered.

Christopher Okigbo died fighting for the Biafran side in that war, cheating the world of a superlative poet and magical prose writer. The pioneer novelist and essayist Chinua Achebe played his own role as a member of the Biafran diplomatic corps, it seems. Soyinka was incarcerated during that war for what the Nigerian govt describes as subversive activity, if I recall properly.

Soyinka continues his culture of engaged intellection, from the political/metaphysical critiques of his early play A Dance of the Forests to dirtying his hands in the murky waters of politics and the clearer light of social activism, controversial efforts but avoiding retreat from the complexities of engagement, of partisan identification.

Soyinka is on the ball in challenging Obi and his followers, even though I would argue that one should always contextualize Soyinka's politics.

For the first time in decades of Nigerian politics, a powerful grassroots movement coalesced round a political figure, shaping a trans-ethnic and class unifying political party, leading to the defeat of the central ethnic centred party at the highest levels in Lagos, a feat not achieved since the victory of Zik in the SW in the 60s and the overturning of this victory by Awolowo's response, a turning point in the creation of an ethnic centred rather than a pan-ethnic politics, as one view holds. Those who are better informed can clarify this.

Obi and Labour were carrying the anguish and hopes of many Igbos who felt recognized politically through Obi, a carry-over of the ravaging of Biafra and later post civil war struggles amidst the controversial location of Ndigbo in the Nigerian polity, the aspirations of multi-ethnic youth who felt raped by the destruction of the Lekki toll gate "revolution", many Christians and others dismayed by APC's Muslim/Muslim ticket coming after the carnage of Miyetti Allah's terrorist Fulani supremacy enabled by Buhari, and people generally who wanted an alternative to the dominance of APC and PDP, parties that, in effect, comprised the same members moving in and out of the same parties.

The movement galvanized by Obi has the makings of a game changer in Nigerian politics but it needs sustainability, as Biko rightly argues in his response to Soyinka.

Are Nigeria's central problems not about leadership and is politics not at the heart of communal leadership?

So, anyone is well guided to look closely at what Obi and Labour stood for at that pivotal moment and try to work out its implications.

Thanks

Toyin

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