Nobel Laureate Professor Wole Soyinka has challenged the Labour Party’s (LP) vice-presidential candidate, Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed, to a one-on-one interview about the nation’s democracy at this time in its history.
Datti Baba-Ahmed, speaking on March 22nd, urged President Muhammadu Buhari and the Chief Justice of Nigeria not to swear in Bola Tinubu, whom INEC declared as the president-elect, claiming that declaring Tinubu a winner and issuing him a certificate of return was a violation of the constitution.
Baba-Ahmed, who appeared on Channels TV’s Politics Today, went on to say that “whoever swears in Mr Tinubu” has “ended Democracy” in Nigeria, a position that Professor Soyinka disagreed with.
In response to the interview, which drew widespread condemnation from political stakeholders and resulted in a N5 million fine for the TV station, the Nobel Laureate described the remarks as a “kind of do-or-die attitude and provocation” that runs counter to democratic values.
Soyinka stated that the LP vice-presidential candidate attempted to “dictate to the supreme arbiter of the nation,” which was unacceptable.
“I have never heard anyone threaten the judiciary on television the way Datti did. I heard the kind of menacing, blackmailing language as that to which we were treated by Datti. That kind of do-or-die attitude and provocation is not what I think we have all been struggling for,” Soyinka said.
“Nearly the totality of Datti’s comment in the interview was unbecoming. It was like trying to dictate to the supreme arbiter of the nation, and whatever you think of the supreme court, it is an institution we all refer to sooner or later.
“But Datti kept saying, in his wisdom, that the supreme court must agree with me. That is what is known as fascistic language and it is not acceptable.”
Giving a reply to these criticisms and the conduct of Datti Baba-Ahmed, Soyinka in a statement titled “Fascism on Course”, noted that Nigerian Democracy 2023 has witnessed innovations largely in the retrogressive vein, as violence, ethnic profiling and intimidation continue to be easily overlooked even as they are directed against dissenting voices.
In response to these criticisms and Datti Baba-actions, Ahmed’s Soyinka stated in a statement titled “Fascism on Course” that Nigerian Democracy 2023 has seen largely retrogressive innovations, as violence, ethnic profiling, and intimidation continue to be easily overlooked even when directed against dissenting voices.
