Nigerians need a clean break from the past, says Soyinka
By TESSY IGOMU
Thursday, April 07, 2011



Photo: Sun News Publishing
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Recycling old hands that have been in power for decades will only end up drawing the nation backward. This was the stance of Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, while speaking on the state of the nation and the 2011 election during a interactive, analytical talkshow hosted by renowned journalist, Riz Khan on Al-jazeera, an Arabic news satellite network.

According to the nobel laureate who said Nigerians needed to make a clean break from the past, restoring the country to the path of honour would require a constitutional overhaul and not the type of revolution sweeping through the Arab world.

His words: “We don’t have to do it the Egyptian way. We don’t have to do it the Libyan way. I believe that genuine constitutional overhaul will take the system to pieces and put them back together again. This is the only salvation I see for avoiding an eventual showdown in the nation.” He maintained that the importance of the Nigerian youth in ushering in the much needed change couldn’t be overemphasised, adding that the youths who form about 65 percent of the country’s electorate should take a risk and go for change.

“Forget us the old brigade,” he urged. “We are spent and in any way, most of us are corrupted and many locked in their old ways. Let us just make a clean break from the past.” On the relevance of the army in providing security during the 2011 elections, Soyinka said he was not sure it was an attempt by the Federal Government to intimidate or stifle oppositions but a move to reinforce the inadequate forces of the Nigeria police. He noted that the police had played questionable roles during past elections and such precedence might have necessitated the deployment of soldiers to the street to maintain law and order.

“In any case, the police have been so badly corrupted under past governments at election time. Even the inspector general of police is not only appointed to oversee some aspect of rigging. As we have seen that in the past. Bringing in the army, for me, is not a bad idea, it’s not a good precedence. I would rather it didn’t happen.

“But in many areas, we have photographs of police commissioners carting away ballot boxes in the last election. In my own state, I’m talking about Ogun State, for instance, we had police coming in, shooting in the air, scaring away voters and taking off with ballot boxes never to be seen again. So what do you do in circumstances like that?”

Addressing the issue of bribery and corruption, which, according to the journalist, had been institutionalised by some Nigerians, the nobel laureate noted that corruption was not peculiar to the country, asserting that even advanced democratic societies were faced with the same menace.

He explained that all Nigeria needed to do to drastically reduce corruption was to have an autonomous and dedicated anti-graft commission that could investigate, arrest, prosecute and not be responsible to the president of the nation.

That is why a Dictator and old horse like Buhari must not be voted in as a president.

“Forget us the old brigade,” he urged. “We are spent and in any way, most of us are corrupted and many locked in their old ways. Let us just make a clean break from the past.”

When Wole Soyinka says it, I guess it sounds better. Same thing we have been singing all along on Nairaland.