₦airaland Forum

Two of Nigeria’s eminent personalities have given divergent prognoses on the just concluded 2015 elections, with Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, stating that he chose Major-General Muhammdu Buhari (rtd) over President Goodluck Jonathan because he was the “better of the two evils”.

In contrast, the Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Council on International Relations and former Commonwealth Secretary-General, Chief Emeka Anyaoku yesterday said Nigerians owed Jonathan a debt of gratitude for his roles in the conduct of the successful elections this year.

Soyinka, in his characteristically blunt manner, termed the outcome of the elections as a stark choice between a failed president and a former military dictator, saying Buhari was the better of the two evils as the incumbent president was an “unmitigated disaster and failure”.

Delivering a lecture titled, “Predicting Nigeria, Electoral Ironies”, at the Harvard University Hutchins Centre for African & African American Research, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, Soyinka also condescendingly described Nigerians of Igbo extraction as “predictable” and “greedy” following their choice to vote en masse for Jonathan in the just concluded general election.

Defending his support for the former military dictator, the foremost dramatist said on a personal level, it was a “painful decision to tell people to vote Buhari, but the country needed a new beginning. I was more against Jonathan, than I was pro-Buhari”.

He informed the sold-out audience that if the incumbent had been anything near competent, Buhari’s most “maladroit statement” about the dog and the baboon being soaked in blood, would have been enough to scuttle his presidential ambition for the fourth time.

“As the nation’s much talked-about centenary year ended, the 2015 elections offered Nigerians an opportunity to halt the nation’s descent into anarchy,” he said.

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http://monitor9ja.com/2015/05/soyinka-buhari-was-better-of-two-evils-jonathan-was-an-unmitigated-disaster-and-failure/

even GEJ knew himself to be a disaster, dats why he voted GMB in his polling unit...

I think GEJ was the least bad of 2 crap options. GEJ was a spineless buffoon who aided and abetted corruption but he didn't, unlike Buhari, have an affinity for economically illiterate policies.

Unlike most people, I believe that inept economic policies are a bigger vice than corruption. Buhari's first tenure was an ode to economic ineptitude. Corruption will still carry on regardless, at best to a lesser degree, but the avalanche of daft policies will be his greatest undoing.

We just needed change so badly..that's why we did what ought to be done..

bugs2:
Soyinka also condescendingly described Nigerians of Igbo extraction as “predictable” and “greedy” following their choice to vote en masse for Jonathan in the just concluded general election.

I think Soyinka has taken this too far with his statments. What about the 40-45% that voted for GEJ in the south-west are they greedy too?

Its not good for our polity and democracy to mark out a group no matter what corroborated their choices,Its democracy and there have their freedom of choice.