Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka Says He Could Not Bring Himself To Vote For President Buhari

Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka sat with Chude Jideonwo, host of #WithChude, to discuss a lot of things... This is an excerpt from the interview where he explains not being able to vote for President Buhari whose second tenure is almost over...

Reacting to the speculation that he supported Buhari in the elections in 2015, he said, “In this country, many people need to find a guilty party for a problem of which they are part. I read that somewhere, somebody said that I should apologise to the nation for backing Buhari. I never, at any time, called on people to vote for Buhari.”

He added, “On voting day, I refused to vote on that day because I could not bring myself to vote for Buhari. However, in the end, the people chose him, and when he was there, I said, give him a chance, he has met the nation at just slightly below ground zero. I called him and said to him that I believed that he is a born-again democrat. In the previous efforts he made, electioneering and all sorts. I believe he has learnt sufficient lesson to be called a born-again democrat. 

So, in an interview with BBC, when the lady was trying to ask me a question, I said, ‘leave him alone, he is a born-again democrat. Give him a chance’. And she asked, ‘what happens if he disappoints’. I said, ‘then, we go back to the barricades’. That section is never quoted because people do not want to go back to the barricade. They feel this is what they are supposed to do.”