Finally, Prof Soyinka Finds His Voice To Speak Against President Tinubu’s Lackluster Address To The Nation On Citizen Protests

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Finally, Prof Soyinka Finds His Voice To Speak Against President Tinubu’s Lackluster Address To The Nation [ Ope Banwo, The Mayor Of Fadeyi Responds to Prof Wole Soyinka’s scathing response to the Government’s Violent crackdown on Protesters]

To be clear, I stopped being a fan of Prof Wole Soyinka a couple of years ago, after having idolized him for most of my young and adult life. This change happened the day he called contrarian “Obidients,” who were adamantly against Chief Tinubu’s candidacy for the presidency in 2023, children of anger and a gestapo group for their ‘vawolent’ and aggressive social media stance against oppression of the political status quo and specifically against the candidacy of Chief Tinubu for the Presidency of Nigeria. They preferred Peter Obi and were unrelenting in fighting for him, but only with words on Twitter, not physical action. (Full honest disclosure: I was fully one of the Obidient Movement Leaders at the time, without any apologies for being one of them, though now after the elections are over, I am not on anybody’s side but the side of Nigeria and call things  the way I see it without any favorites)

Truth of the matter is, I felt personally betrayed by a man I thought personified principled stance, right to be contrarian, resistance to oppression, corruption, and impunity in the land—a man who built a global reputation as a vehement resistor against political nonsense in any form. We all grew up knowing Prof Wole Soyinka as a civil rights legend who would go to any length to resist bad governance and protect his right to be a contrarian.

After all, Prof Soyinka was the same man who allegedly took a gun to a radio station and held the staff hostage, forcing them to announce the true election results when he felt the elections were rigged. This was the same man who formed a dreaded secret society called the Pirates Confraternity to fight against injustice on campuses, even if it meant burning down houses and confronting adversaries. This was the same Soyinka who fled to Biafra land, and was given protection there, when his own people sought his life for his actions in the west. People tend to forget that Wole Soyinka was a very forceful and VIOLENT activist who inspired youths everywhere to do whatever it takes to fight for justice and their rights.

So, for me to witness Prof Soyinka, my childhood hero, in his old age, condemn the youths he himself inspired to stand up against political impunity, perceived corruption of our electoral process, and Yoruba xenophobia was heartbreaking. Witnessing how he tried to demoralize and demonize the angry and betrayed youths of our nation for daring to be vociferous with words only was mentally traumatic for me and many others. After that, I just could never see him in the same light again. Prof Soyinka regrettably showed that, at the end of the day, even the best of us could be slaves to our ethnic identity, and that was shocking to me to the core.

The real Soyinka we all grew up to love could never in a million years have endorsed the Tinubu candidacy for any reason, regardless of his tribe, simply as a matter of principle. Not even because of underperformance (I personally think Tinubu is a competent politician and can excel in making things happen, if his health and life time of political patronage permits), but because of Tinubu’s antecedents as the kingmaker who gave us Buhari and the myriad of questions that dogged him during the campaign—whether proven in court or not (his role in brokering and supporting the worst government Nigeria has ever seen; birth records controversy; corruption allegations; drug allegations; BVAS issues; suspected bad health, etc. though I agree none of it has been established in court beyond a reasonable doubt). It’s not a matter of law but a matter of principle, and the Wole Soyinka we all know would have been all over those issues and refused to endorse Tinubu for president. At the least, I expected that he would just keep quiet and watch as an elder statesman, passing his active years, and let the youths engage with their prospective new leaders.

Alas, when it came time for the Yoruba intelligentsia to close ranks and protect their own, the strong Kongi man melted and jettisoned a lifetime of standing for principle to endorse Tinubu’s candidacy despite all the issues swirling around him at the time… and to me, that was unforgivable. It’s like discovering that your pastor is a hypocrite who preaches one thing and then does something totally different when it concerns his own brother.

However, having said that, I am happy that my former hero now appears to be finding his voice with his response to the President’s address. Prof. Soyinka pointedly spoke the minds of many of us on this issue when he said: “My primary concern, quite predictably, is the continuing deterioration of the state’s seizure of protest management, an area in which the presidential address fell conspicuously short.” “Such short-changing of civic deserving, regrettably, goes to arm the security forces in the exercise of impunity and condemns the nation to a seemingly unbreakable cycle of resentment and reprisals.” “Live bullets as a state response to civic protest—that becomes the core issue. Even tear gas remains questionable in most circumstances, certainly an abuse in situations of clearly peaceful protest. Hunger marches constitute a universal S.O.S., not peculiar to the Nigerian nation. They belong indeed in a class of their own, never mind the collateral claims emblazoned on posters.”

Soyinka continued in his blistering response to the government’s repressive tactics towards the planned protest: “The tragic response to the ongoing hunger marches in parts of the nation, for which notice was served, constitutes a retrogression that takes the nation even further back than the deadly culmination of the watershed ENDSARS protests. It evokes pre-independence—colonial—acts of disdain, a passage that induced the late-stage pioneer Hubert Ogunde’s folk opera BREAD AND BULLETS, earning that nationalist serial persecution and proscription by the colonial government.” Soyinka noted that the “nation’s security agencies cannot pretend unawareness of alternative models for emulation, civilized advances in security intervention.”

All I as the Mayor Of Fadeyi can say on behalf of all Nigerians  from the ‘Fadeyi side of life’ can say to Prof Soyinka’s observation is ‘Bravo! And thank you, sir.’ YES, THANK YOU PROF! .That is the Kongi we all took inspiration from, and that is the Wole Soyinka who wrote The Man Died that we all got inspired by in our salad days. Hopefully, now that he has found his voice again at 80, he will keep speaking until his time is up. Our nation needs truth-tellers now more than ever.