Between Jonathan and Buhari, choice is a burden –Wole Soyinka
By Chidi Obineche
Nobel Laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka has cried out loud over difficulties in making a choice between President Goodluck Jonathan of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, and General Muhammadu Buhari RETD, of the All Progressives Congress, APC, and has therefore urged the electorate “not to simplify the challenge.” According to him , the reasons for the new challenge are not farfetched: “They are firmly lodged in the trauma of memory and the rawness of the current realities”
In a statement released yesterday, entitled “The challenge of change, the burden of choice”, Soyinka sought to refresh the memories of Nigerians to the current dilemma and carve a safe passage for making choices ahead the presidential elections. He urged the partisans to exercise self restraint in assessments and expectations. He said;” Facts remain facts and should never be tampered with. Verification is nearly always available from records and the testimonies of witnesses.” He said , he was obligated to correct such tendencies in the interest of truth. “Embarrassing though it is, we are obliged to correct all such tendencies openly, since revisionism is a travesty of history and never more treacherously so, than in a time of critical democratic choices.”
Soyinka took exception to recent falsification of facts of history by some partisans, while projecting their candidates, arguing that “ in recalling or commenting on any event that involves victim and violator, there is a difference between, never happened, or it was the accepted norm for the time, etc. on the one hand , and the other, We have forgiven what did happen,” Soyinka declared that’ exoneration through denial, and without evidence of remorse, or restitution by a violator is a serious lapse in public accountability, and an invitation to a repeat by the offender, or other aspiring emulators’
He reminded Nigerians that in every crisis, it is not unusual to find oneself in bed with ideologically embarrassing partners, and this should not make one to begin to dress them in saintly robes. He berated those, who he said, should be blamed for the parlous state of the nation, but who rather than hide their faces in shame, are seizing every opportunity offered by the moment to draw attention , relevance and recognition to themselves. He further accused them of being the real promoters of the ‘current national trauma of a Boko Haram malignancy , the anti- corruption rhetoricians, who however believe that they have literally got away with murder’. He urged the electorate to be discerning of their antics and incapacitate them. He further expressed the view that the nation sits precariously, “at a critical turn, where the wrong choice, places it beyond all hope of remaining intact’. He therefore placed the burden on the laps of the incapacity of the nation to be viable, functional, ability to generate its very existence and cater for the future. He explained that the future reposes much prospect that any mistake of choice of the gladiators will ultimately spell doom for it. The Nobel Laureate castigated those he branded “unprincipled campaigners whose pastime is to propagate a choice I have never declared” He described the practice as “ fraudulent, but said he was consoled by the fact he was not the only victim.”Even the dead who cannot answer back, have not been spared.
In out of context, the ongoing campaign appears to have appropriated any public figure as free for all material, to be quoted out of turn, his or her utterances mangled and distorted, forced into incongruous contexts, and sometimes, even in a counterproductive manner, although such desperate campaigners appear blissfully unaware of this” Soynka described the late Nelson Mandela as an inspiration and exemplar for all times, adding that his civic courage should be adopted by all in making a choice in the forthcoming election. For Soyinka, our civic muse is summaratively freedom, and liberal participation in the democratic process and the option it offers. Of the two hard choices to make, ie Jonathan and Buhari,, he said “one is a representative of the immediate past, still present with us, and with an accumulation of negative baggage. The other is a remote past, justly resented, and centrally implicated in grievous assaults against Nigerian humanity, with a landscape that continues to lacerate collective memory”
Pondering over widespread inclination that the General is born again, he declared that “it is pointlessly and dangerously provocative to present General Buhari as something that he probably was not”. Arguing further, he said he observed that Nigerians had been deceived before by a former ruler who many thought had been purged and transformed by a close encounter with death, and imprisonment, and later turned out to be an embodiment of incorrigibility on several fronts, including a contempt for law and the constitution. He then asks: ‘will it be different this time round? In response to his own question, he averred that he had studied him from a distance, questioned those who have interacted closely with him , including his former running mate Pastor Bakare, and dissected his key utterances, past and current, and is encouraged to believe that there is a plausible transformation that comes close to that of another ex- military dictator, Mathew Kerekou of the Benin Republic’ He however insist that the General must be watched closely and treated with caution , even as he contended that he cannot concede same to Jonathan.
He described Jonathan’s tenure as ‘untenable and intolerable’. He said that the nation was passing through an incipient police state and outright fascism in a dispensation that is supposedly democratic. He stated that’ ‘we have all endured a season of stagnation in development and a drastic deterioration in the quality of existence. We are force-fed the burgeoning culture of impunity, blatantly manifested in massive corruption. We feel insulted by the courtship and indulgence of common criminals by the machinery of power’
He summarized it all with an allusion of a failure of leadership, resulting in a near total collapse of society.
Soyinka also criticized the tactics employed in the political campaigns, saying it is ‘most vulgar and sickening, adding that it may lead to fascism if the wrong choice was made. While urging Nigerians a collective leap of faith, he warned that if the correct choice was not made, “ we have no choice but to revoke an unspoken pact and resume our march to that yet elusive space of freedom, however often interrupted, and by whatever means we can humanly muster. And if in the process, the consequence is national hara-kiri, no one can say that there had not been no deluge of warnings,” Soyinka concluded. (Credits: The Sun).