Nobel laureate and elder statesman, Wole Soyinka, on Wednesday, said Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 general elections and his vice presidential candidate, Datti Baba-Ahmed, played to the script of those who were plotting the conspiracy to annul the 2023 presidential election.
Soyinka, who spoke on Channels Television on Wednesday, said, “I am alleging that there was a conspiracy from the very beginning, before the election, to make sure the elections did not take place or that even if the voting did take place, that everything be reverted to what happened under Babangida.”
Referring to the 1993 election cancelled by former military dictator Ibrahim Babangida, Soyinka said, “History was about to repeat itself, some people were determined to take us back to those days.”
But the Independent National Electoral Commission had declared Bola Tinubu, as president after polling 8,794,726 votes to win the 2023 presidential election.
Reacting to a section of his latest book titled ‘Baiting Igbophobia: The Sunny Igboanugo Thesis’, where he made reference to the comment of vice-presidential candidate of the LP, Baba-Ahmed, Soyinka said it was “a disgraceful interview”.
Baba-Ahmed, a former House of Representatives member had asked the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Kayode Ariwoola, not to swear in Tinubu as duly elected president of the country.
Soyinka described Baba-Ahmed’s comment as “disgraceful and menacing”.
“At that interview by Datti, that disgraceful and menacing interview, was for me the ultimate signal because this was somebody calling for a rubbishing of a structure he profited to ever become a governor. I am talking about Peter Obi, he was a judgment governor.
“And even before he attended the tribunal, his party, his spokesman, in this case, Datti, came on television to threaten everyone; to threaten hell if his interpretation of results was not upheld. This for me was amoral, politically amoral, socially amoral. It was playing to a certain script even if they didn’t know it,” Soyinka added.
Obi and Datti are yet to react to this latest comment by Soyinka as of the time of filing this report but Obi had in a previous reaction said there were efforts to portray him in a bad light after the federal government had said the statement by Datti was treasonous.
