By David Kabiyesi
Nobel Laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka has declared in clear terms that Bola Tinubu, Peter Obi, and Atiku Abubakar’s failure to make reconstructing the nation top of their agenda forced him to shy away from endorsing any of the three presidential aspirants before the elections
Speaking on the aftermath of the 2023 election, Soyinka maintained that paramount before any incoming president should be how to reconstruct the nation in a bid to heal all wounds.
“One of the reasons I refused to endorse any candidate is because none of the candidates addressed the things closest to my heart, like again, reconstructing the nation,” Soyinka said.
“I did not see any genuine commitment, any believable agenda about restructuring, decentralization of Nigeria which is at the heart of the problem for me at the moment.
“People were more concerned with just aiming for power.”
“I do not think we do not understand democracy, certain stakes have been catapulted to the fore and over – have come to overwhelm what should be the real stuffing of the democratic process,” Soyinka said.
“We can still come back to that phase where we had a common purpose that enough of military rule, I’m talking about June 12, and demonstrated, not just to ourselves but to the whole world.
“Yes, we know what democracy is and we know how to practice it and unfortunately, we seem not to have succeeded in reaching that level of democratic concert that we exhibited when said, look, let us take back our political violation and get rid of the Kaaki boys and we can still come back to it,” he said
