- Wole Soyinka has described the former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, as ‘objectively unfitted’ for restoring Nigeria's sanity
- The literary icon said beneath every bully, there is a scared product of insecurity and troubled conscience
- He also called for a one-on-one debate with Obasanjo on his eight years stewardship in Nigeria
Nigeria's Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, called for a one-on-one debate with a former president, Olusegun Obasanjo.
Soyinka in his new book described the former president as ‘objectively unfitted’ for the role of restoring Nigeria on a path of sanity.
The literary icon said this in his interventions series; Interventions VIII, titled ‘Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?: Gani’s Unfinished Business’ which was officially released to the public by Bookcraft on Tuesday, July 3.
Soyinka said: "I know that deep inside, there is a soakaway pond of personal insecurity struggling to be drained. Beneath every bully, there is a scared product of insecurity and troubled conscience."
"Now, fight your own demons as best as you can, and feel free to flagellate Buhari (President Muhammadu) with all the weapons in your armoury. I have only one demand: keep away from movements struggling to restore this nation to the path of sanity and even moderate rectitude. End your hijacking propensity," Soyinka said.
Punch reports that Soyinka while describing the Presidential Library in Abeokuta, Ogun state, which was built by Obasanjo as ‘Presidential Laundromat’, said the facility was built with proceeds of fraud.'
He said: “That structure in Abeokuta remains a moral eyesore to those who were in a position to obtain even a glimmering of the proceedings that inflicted such a purulent carbuncle on the landscape of my state, Ogun.
However, even the grossest evil can be turned to some good. When we were school pupils, one of our illustrated reading texts was one entitled, ‘This is the house that Jack built.’ Today, and forevermore, generations will point to that thing which I have daubed the Presidential Laundromat and say: This is the house that Fraud built.’’
“I dare Obasanjo to meet me one-on-one on any podium to present the facts of that stewardship to the Nigerian people… Just how did you, in eight years, rise to the challenges of power generation for a population of a hundred and fifty million people, endowed with enormous energy resources…
“Eight years-repeat, eight years in office, and the elected estate manager of this vast territory could not even provide the modicum level of power to activate even a low-level cottage industrial culture. And such individual has the nerve to sermonise about rising to challenges,"
