Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka believes that the Igbos are a greedy lot, who would do anything to achieve financial gain.
According to the world renowned wordsmith, the Igbos voted for
President Jonathan in the presidential election because of their
stomachs.
He made the utterances while delivering a lecture titled ‘Predicting
Nigeria, Electoral Ironies’ at the Harvard University Hutchins Centre
for African & African American Research, in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, USA.
Below are excerpts from his lecture:
“Igbos remained unrepentant and resolute towards their
strategic objective of secession at worst; or a Nigerian president of
Igbo extraction at best,” he said at the lecture, which held on April
29.
“The climax of MASSOB’s war against the Nigerian state was the call
for sit-ins and civil disobedience that shut down markets and public
services, as Igbos stayed at home in a symbolic gesture to assert
Biafran independence. The call was honoured by governors in the two
principal Ibo states, though without fanfare.
“The Igbos are probably the only group of Nigerians that you can
predict with great accuracy whom they will vote for in an election,
because they tend to put their votes where their stomachs take them;
suffering as it were, from incurable money-mindedness, as they would
stop at nothing in their quest for personal financial gain.”
“Muhammadu Buhari was the better of the two evils as the incumbent
president Goodluck Jonathan had been an unmitigated disaster and
failure,” he said.
“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.”
“Nothing is more unworthy of leadership than to degrade a system by
which one attains fulfillment, and this is what the nation witnessed
time and time again under Jonathan, who was increasingly becoming
intolerant of opposition in an escalating streak of impunity and
authoritarian madness, which was most blatant and unconscionable.”
“The ‘militricians’ – soldiers turned politicians in power – aren’t
looking for excellence; their civilian cohorts are worse. Short cuts and
how to circumvent the system for the profit of a few are the norm of
governance. Those who do honest work are derided as lacking the skill to
fit it. Ironically, things haven’t quite changed a bit after 16 years
of democracy in the country.”