Soyinka to Tinubu: make power devolution priority

To make the needed impact, President-elect Bola Ahmed Tinubu must decentralized power Nobel laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka canvassed yesterday.

Soyinka, who again accused Labour Party (LP) Vice-Presidential Candidate Datti Baba-Ahmed of denigrating the nation’s judiciary, also said he would want a total reinforcement of the civil society. 

There should be devolution of power to arms of government, states, and local governments.

He spoke while featuring on Arise TV News Morning Belt programme.

The eminent playwright said: “Decentralisation, that is all I want out of the incoming government. Whichever it is, let us have a genuine, not rhetorical, but genuine, practical, detailed decentralisation.

“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.”

*I warned Obi about Obidients 

Prof. Soyinka, 88, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, also said that before the February 25 presidential election, he warned LP presidential candidate Peter Obi, that Obidients could make him lose the poll.

“My rejection of fascism is nothing new. On three occasions, I was able to send a message to Peter Obi that, if he lost the election, it would be his followers who lost it for him, “ Soyinka stated.

In Baba-Ahmed’s controversial television interview, he said: “I’ve never heard anyone threaten the judiciary on TV the way Datti did.”

Soyinka also denounced a viral social media post that claimed he endorsed a presidential candidate in the run-up to the election.

He described 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 that 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.”

The world-acclaimed author explained that he was disappointed that an interview with Channels Television recently was taken out of context and misinterpreted by different media houses.

The playwright had in a statement on Tuesday condemned the physical violence inflicted on those designated ‘strangers’ in Lagos in the lead-up to and during governorship elections.

The statement titled: “Media Responsibility”, said: “What I have read – at least, thus far – this(Tuesday) morning, extracted from a one-and-a-half-long interview, conducted a week ago with Channels, brings once more to the fore, the critical responsibility of the media in transmitting the spoken, even recorded – word to the public.

“This is especially crucial in a time of civic uncertainty. When remarks are taken out of context, spliced into a new one, or provided a sensational headline, distortions become stamped on public receptivity, and the central intent of one’s remarks becomes completely unrecognisable.

“I denounced the menacing utterances of a Vice-Presidential aspirant as unbecoming. It was a gladiatorial challenge directed at the judiciary and, by implication, the rest of the democratic polity.”