OAU VC: Soyinka Berates Ife Indigenes Over ‘Crazy’ Protests

Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, has condemned Ile Ife indigenes over their “crazy” protests and agitation over the appointment of Prof. Adebayo Bamire as Vice-Chancellor of the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU).

While speaking at the University of Pennsylvania, the United States on Tuesday, Soyinka queried the call for an Ile-Ife VC, saying such shouldn’t exist anywhere.

He further noted that the people of Ile Ife ought to have denounced the protesters for making such calls for an OAU VC.

Soyinka who spoke on “The Politics of Black Intellection and Creativity,” which was the first of the newly inaugurated Distinguished Lecture in African Studies added that those behind the OAU protests should be “ruthlessly” dealt with.

“Why should there be an Ife VC anywhere? An Ife person wrote me and said, ‘look at these people disgracing us.’ I told him to go there and disgrace them. You are an Ife person. You should be in the frontline.

“The Ife people should say those people don’t belong to us; we don’t know where they came from. And they should be dealt with ruthlessly.

“I just don’t understand what they put in the water these days. It is crazy,” Soyinka said.