Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka has raised concerns about efforts to annul the 2023 presidential election in a manner reminiscent of the 1993 election annulment by former Head of State Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida.
Speaking on Channels Television on Wednesday, Soyinka highlighted the intentions of those advocating for an interim government, suggesting their aim was to let history repeat itself.
Soyinka’s comments came in response to the post-election remarks made by Datti Baba-Ahmed, the vice-presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 election.
Baba-Ahmed had controversially stated that Nigeria had no president-elect yet following the announcement of Bola Tinubu, the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), as the election winner.
He argued that Tinubu’s potential presidency would be unconstitutional, claiming he did not meet the legal requirements.
The Nobel laureate expressed strong disapproval of Baba-Ahmed’s interview, labeling it “a disgraceful interview.”
Soyinka criticized the nature of the discourse, which he felt had shifted from a democratic contest to “an individual contest for power.”
He 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.
“When we all just woke up and discovered that even though the results have been calculated, even though the results were in possession of international bodies, including monitoring embassies and so on, even if we had the results directly, it was suddenly annulled.
“History was about to repeat itself, some people were determined to take us back to those days.
“So, for me, it was no longer a contest between individuals, it was now a contest between the so-called interim political party and democracy.
“When you have a binary like that, I have no doubt or hesitation about what side of the barricade my position should be.”
Soyinka also described Baba-Ahmed’s interview as “menacing”.
He said, “At that interview by Datti, that disgraceful and menacing interview, was for me the ultimate signal because this was somebody calling for the rubbishing of a structure he profited to ever become a governor.
“I am talking about Peter Obi. Even before the tribunal had said… , this spokesperson, in this case Datti, came on the television to threaten everyone if his interpretation of results was not upheld.
“This for me was amoral, politically and socially amoral, it was playing into a certain script, even if they didn’t know it.
“Sometimes democracy leaves the stage for an individual contest for power and then commences its own struggle for existence or actualisation.”
