Wole Soyinka yesterday reviewed the polity ahead of the coming elections and adjudged the All Progressives Congress (APC) presidential candidate, General Muhammadu Buhari, a better choice than President Goodluck Jonathan.

Prof. Soyinka in a statement entitled ‘The challenge of change – A burden of choice’ said that while the contest is not one between blacks and whites, saints and demons, salvation and damnation, Buhari seems to have gone through “a plausible transformation that comes close to that of another ex-military dictator, Mathew Kerekou of the Benin Republic.”

Conversely, he said that Nigeria under President Jonathan has been subjected to “acts of outright fascism in a dispensation that is supposedly democratic. We have endured a season of stagnation in development and a drastic deterioration in the quality of existence. We are force-fed the burgeoning culture of impunity, blatantly manifested in massive corruption. We feel insulted by the courtship and indulgence of common criminals by the machinery of power.”

On the choice before the electorate, Prof. Soyinka said: “Someone in the media has called it a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea, another between Apocalypse and Salvation. The reasons are not far-fetched. They are firmly lodged in the trauma of memory and the rawness of current realities. “Well, at least one can dialogue with the devil; even dine with that creature with the proverbial long spoon. With the deep blue sea however, deceptively placid, even the best swimmers drown. The problem for some is deciding which is the devil, which is the deep blue sea. For most, instructively, the difference is clear. There are no ambiguities, no qualifications, no pause for reflection – they are simply raring to go! I envy them.

“Through participation, direct or vicarious, we find ourselves landed within a system that has thrown up two choices – realistically speaking, that is. Formally, we dare not ignore the claims of other contestants. Of the two however, one is representative of the immediate past, still present with us, and with an accumulation of negative baggage.

“The other is a remote past, justly resented, centrally implicated in grievous assaults against Nigerian humanity, with a landscape of broken lives that continues to lacerate collective memory.”

“It is largely around this question that a choice will probably be made. It is pointlessly, and dangerously provocative to present General Buhari as something that he probably was not. It is however just as purblind to insist that he has not demonstrably striven to become what he most glaringly was not, to insist that he has not been chastened by intervening experience and – most critically – by a vastly transformed environment – both the localised and the global.

“Of course we have been deceived before. A former ruler whom, one presumed, had been purged and transformed by a close encounter with death, and imprisonment, has turned out to be an embodiment of incorrigibility on several fronts, including a contempt for law and constitution. Would it be different this time round? Has subjection to police tear-gas and other forms of violence, like the rest of us mortals, and a spell in close detention, truly ‘civilianized’ this contender? I have studied him from a distance, questioned those who have closely interacted with him, including his former running-mate, Pastor Bakare, and dissected his key utterances past and current.

“And my findings? A plausible transformation that comes close to that of another ex-military dictator, Mathew Kerekou of the Benin Republic.
Read the complete report on http://www.naij.com/381182-buhari-is-a-better-choice-to-jonathan-soyinka.html

This should be on fp.

Good to know that the Nobel Laureate
is on the winning side!

Sai Buhari



P.S.- are u freestyling@d guy above

Ok

0700Jesse:
Buhari said he took bank loan to buy 27.5million nomination form because he is a poor man!
And now buhari's wife is saying she donated 135million drugs to Adamawa IDPs.,

who buhari wan deceive? You lie for us say you poor, where your wife kon see over 6billion naira to donate drugs?
May God continue to expose your lies to Nigerians

My fellow NL please stop misleading people here. Take you your time to do research on how the 135M was raised. God bless Nigeria

0700Jesse:
Buhari said he took bank loan to buy 27.5million nomination form because he is a poor man!
And now buhari's wife is saying she donated 135million drugs to Adamawa IDPs.,

who buhari wan deceive? You lie for us say you poor, where your wife kon see over 6billion naira to donate drugs?
May God continue to expose your lies to Nigerians

Your question is unnecessary. How does Buhari's being "poor" makes his wife poor?

0700Jesse:
Buhari said he took bank loan to buy 27.5million nomination form because he is a poor man!
And now buhari's wife is saying she donated 135million drugs to Adamawa IDPs.,

who buhari wan deceive? You lie for us say you poor, where your wife kon see over 6billion naira to donate drugs?
May God continue to expose your lies to Nigerians

the wife rich while the husband poor. E dey happen.

Brb

OrlandoOwoh:

Your question is unnecessary. How does Buhari's being "poor" makes his wife poor?

see this group of eternally deceived minds

madridguy:


My fellow NL please stop misleading people here. Take you your time to do research on how the 135M was raised. God bless Nigeria

you don't know about the donation and you are acting like as if the money was raised, we all know it was not raised but it was by buhari's wife only, thats why she boasted that she single-handedly donate the drugs!
Moreover God punish your hypocrisy!

Wad do ya expect from a foolish old bastard dat brought cultism to dis naija.

Amaechi has just renewed his subscription on Soyinka's Network.

0700Jesse:
Buhari said he took bank loan to buy 27.5million nomination form because he is a poor man!
And now buhari's wife is saying she donated 135million drugs to Adamawa IDPs.,

who buhari wan deceive? You lie for us say you poor, where your wife kon see over 6billion naira to donate drugs?
May God continue to expose your lies to Nigerians

Stop making your ignorance a public show in order not to be seen as a f0ól.

Sane minds endorsing the people's General unlike those that are endorsing GEJ in exchange of ghana must go.
Sai Buhari.

Weather he endorse buhari or not it does not stop him from been a serial loser who would still loses woefully March 28
GEJ till buhari goes back to school.

0700Jesse:


you don't know about the donation and you are acting like as if the money was raised, we all know it was not raised but it was by buhari's wife only, thats why she boasted that she single-handedly donate the drugs!
Moreover God punish your hypocrisy!

stop being an idi.ot; the money was just donated through her; it's purely ceremonial. Stop being stu.pid.

double0seven:


stop being an idi.ot; the money was just donated through her; it's purely ceremonial. Stop being stu.pid.

its clear you are mentally deranged

0700Jesse:


its clear you are mentally deranged

you are the one that needs help; if it's such a big deal; do you see any newspaper OE media house raising any eyebrows over it.

I beg, go and sit down for the toilet my friend; and groan out some lumps of s**t......maybe tour stupid.ity will come out in the process.

Sensible Nigerians are aware of that... that is why we have decided to MarchGejout and MarchBuhariIn

Though I enjoyed the write up. but why the Prof no just go straight to the point? buhari and GEJ. they are two bad people but buhari is better. shikenah. why waste time circumlocuting?

The grounds on which General Buhari is being promoted as the alternative choice are … not only shaky, but pitifully naive. History matters. Records are not kept simply to assist the weakness of memory, but to operate as guides to the future. Of course, we know that human beings change. What the claims of personality change or transformation impose on us is a rigorous inspection of the evidence, not wishful speculation or behind-the- scenes assurances. Public offence, crimes against a polity, must be answered in the public space, not in caucuses of bargaining. In Buhari, we have been offered no evidence of the sheerest prospect of change. On the contrary, all evident suggests that this is one individual who remains convinced that this is one ex-ruler that the nation cannot call to order.

- Wole Soyinka 2011

What I will like to know from Wole Soyinka is when the above view stopped being relevant and what has changed? Maybe it is because of the change of Wardrope by Buhari but I will like to give Soyinka the benefit of the doubt and hope he can explain why the above quote by himself is no longer relevant?

What a pathetic excuse. So between few years of Kongis dissection/condemnation of buhari personality/regime, GMB is now a born-again and history should be jettisoned.

I am tempted to ask, do too much of books make some mad Or could Wike be right afterall

Well said, the great one.

Even if he isn't that much better, at the end of the day, the contemptible and walking-utter-failure, GEJ, had his chance and he he flopped on so many levels. Evidently, for result(s), it's always better to try something new.

Albert Einstein said it best, when he alluded to insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And he also said: "We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them."

0700Jesse:
Buhari said he took bank loan to buy 27.5million nomination form because he is a poor man!
And now buhari's wife is saying she donated 135million drugs to Adamawa IDPs.,

who buhari wan deceive? You lie for us say you poor, where your wife kon see over 6billion naira to donate drugs?
May God continue to expose your lies to Nigerians

Read

The first question that you need to ask is if she single-handedly handled the project, or partnered with NGOs, and other corporations to make that happen. It is a standard practice to seek sponsorship from organizations when involved in any charity work.

Aisha Buhari, who was accompanied by five APC leaders’ wives , including former Plateau State Deputy Governor, Pauline Tallen; Judith Amaechi; Mairo Al-Makura; Toyin Saraki and former Women Affairs Minister, Hajiya Hajjo Sani, distributed drugs worth over N135 million to the displaced persons.

Meanwhile

Oga Jonathan's wife will not donate drugs to IDPs in the north with her 4 billion naira allocation, she would rather use the money to buy gold, hand bags or use it to develop her Estate along Airport Road in Abuja