Soyinka counsels Tinubu, knocks Obi’s running mate

Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has urged the President-elect, Bola Tinubu, to ensure a proper devolution of power to arms of government (states and local governments) while in office.

Soyinka, in an interview with Arise TV on Wednesday, April, 5, also lashed out at the vice-presidential candidate, Datti Baba-Ahmed, over his recent interview with Channels TV.

“Decentralisation, that is all I want out of the incoming government. Whichever it is, let us have a genuine, not rhetorical, but a genuine, practical, detailed decentralisation,” he stated.

Soyinka, who equally called for a total reinforcement of the civil society, said: “The real devolution of power, more devolution of power to the various arms, various tiers of government, state, local governments, the reinforcement of civil entity, civil society, in the various groupings, that is the kind of structure which I want. You can summarise it in that one word, decentralisation.”

Speaking on Baba-Ahmed’s controversial interview, Soyinka accused the LP’s vice-presidential candidate of denigrating the country’s judiciary.

READ ALSO: Soyinka: My interview with Channels TV taken out of context

“I’ve never heard anyone threaten the judiciary on TV the way Datti did,” the renowned playwright added.

Soyinka further denounced a viral social media post which claimed he endorsed a presidential candidate in the build-up to the 2023 general election, describing the post as “nauseating and praise-singing tracts”.

“Please, beware of fake news. A lot of damage is being done by fake news. Even as recently as a few days ago.

“Some garbage, verbiage, nauseating, and praise-singing tracts which we have seen so many times before have been resurrected and attributed to Wole Soyinka. It makes me sick. If people want to be praise singers let them do it in their own father’s name and leave Soyinka out of it.”

“I want to use this opportunity to announce a reward of $1,000 to anyone who can finger successfully the author of some of the tracts which have been attributed to me over the past six months,” he said.

The Star