The Metamorphosis Of Uncle Soyinka

 By Ugoji Egbujo

Professor Soyinka is a genius. Besides his exceptional creativity in drama and poetry, he has fought oppression like an attendant spirit. However, in the last few months, he has spent more time proving that he is human than engaging the demons of corruption and injustice. Before Tinubu, his friend ran for president, Soyinka would dwell on the credibility of the electoral process and dream of mass participation.

*Soyinka 

And if INEC spent two years seeking the authority to transfer polling unit results electronically to enhance transparency and eliminate substitution of results at collation, Soyinka would insist it was non-negotiable. And if INEC ran into a suspicious glitch on election day, leaving room for mischief at collation centres, Soyinka would worry about the integrity of INEC and lampoon the credibility of the process.

Now Soyinka isn’t bothered about the commitment the electoral umpire gave the youths. Soyinka appears more interested in the sideshow and what some Sea dogs told him about who came third and fourth in the elections. He is incandescent at the rambunctious overreaction of the once apathetic youth to anomalies, defeat or perceived injustice. Soyinka used to be on the side of political scepticism and activism.

Soyinka is 89 and has paid his dues. So when he is indignant, every effort must be made to see his point of view. He is perhaps disappointed that a dreamed third force has suffered a congenital malformation. He would have preferred a more broad-based movement driven by intellectualism and perhaps idealism. So Soyinka misses the old Labour Party. 

He thinks the Obidients have made the Labour Party an intellectually wretched regional party of nattering zombies. He doesn’t read exuberance in the actions of the youth. He doesn’t see any correlation between their intemperate vociferousness and the ruthlessness of the predicament they foresee. He sees only the reactions and not actions. So he sees the force of lies. Soyinka reads perhaps tribalism, charlatanism and extremism. 

In 1979, Chief Obafemi Awolowo performed well and earned the right to question the outcome of the presidential election. Awolowo swept the votes from the old western region and did poorly everywhere else. Yet nobody thought the UPN was a moribund clannish vehicle. It was believed that if the head of the ticket was a morally upright man like Awolowo, then perhaps his own people would be justified in flocking to him like sheep.

 Awolowo’s rejection of the results and the legal battle up to the supreme court weren’t deemed a clandestine attempt to truncate the infant democracy. In the 2023 presidential election, the Labour Party was the dominant party in three of the country’s six zones. It was the dominant party in Lagos and Abuja, the most cosmopolitan geographical spaces in Nigeria. Yet Soyinka thinks the party has either regressed or derailed.

Soyinka has depth and great convictions. In a sense, he has no peers. As a young man, he seized a radio station with a gun to frustrate vote thieves. Then, a few years later, he did the unthinkable by crossing over to enemy territory in search of reason and compromise to stop the civil war. That earned him a solitary confinement. The man hasn’t died in him. He still speaks in favour of diversity of opinions and preferences. Unlike other intellectuals, he isn’t scared to pitch his tent with self-determination.

So he doesn’t think IPOB is madness. And he understands how many ran to Obi because they thought it was the turn of the Igbo. He knows the youth in Edo and Delta who had become frustrated in many diverse ways with the lazy politics of the two main parties and wanted something different. Soyinka understands complexities. That is why his obsession with the flammability of temperament of the excited opposition that has made money redundant in politics is beginning to bother his devotees.  

In 1998, the Southeast voted for PDP. In 2003, the Southeast voted Obasanjo. Though a good measure of the support was mediated by ballot box stuffing, the region wasn’t ambivalent. In 2007, Yaradua garnered his highest percentage votes from the southeast and south south. In 2011, Jonathan got more percentage votes from the southeast than anywhere else. Discounting all improprieties, in all these elections, the Southeast voted almost unanimously for one party.

In 2015, the southeast voted totally for Jonathan. Buhari’s worst performance was in the southeast. In 2019, Atiku’s best performance was in Anambra state. He scored a higher percentage than he did in Adamawa or anywhere else. The pattern is therefore predictable. Voting like a headless mob, right? The outcomes were foreseeable. But in 2023, people wonder why the southeast, claiming it was its turn, voted in one direction for its son whom millions deemed different from others. 

Soyinka knows he is an authority. A man of such gravity that can tilt the moral compass of a nation. He knows that millions of people in this country could rely on him for the balance of reasons to resolve a moral contradiction. Amongst these folks are lawyers and judges. Soyinka knows that the Supreme Court will deliver the final verdict on the presidential election petitions in a few weeks. Rather than wait for the apex court, Soyinka has weighed in. It’s not fascism.

He is exercising his freedoms. Soyinka knows that because of his intellectual gravitas, he can affect the scale of the balance of probabilities. He vouches for his organization, the Sea Dogs confraternity and assumes it has the accurate results of the elections. So he doesn’t mind imposing his judgment on the justices. A few months ago, Soyinka railed against fascism and Obidients because Datti Ahmed attempted to impose his free opinions about the election on the nation in a way that rendered the courts redundant. Perhaps, Soyinka doesn’t mind a little fascism brewed in Abeokuta.

Soyinka’s faith in his confraternity is admirable. The fraternity must have authentic results for Rivers and Benue. International and local observers were united in saying that atrocities happened in Rivers. The BBC has investigated Rivers and said that the results published by INEC were fraudulent. The results announced by INEC are markedly different from the sum of the results published by the INEC on IREV. Rivers could be an isolated event.

But If Soyinka’s confraternity didn’t weep about the electoral heist that happened in Rivers on February 25, then it must cover its face with 96 masks and proceed for a deliverance at Yiaga Africa. But if the confraternity narrated the story of a riverine Alibaba and his forty thieves to Soyinka, then the great Kongi must come forth at dawn and tell the public how he arrived at ‘Gbajue’. Soyinka was categorical in saying Obi placed third.

But that wasn’t the sensational bit. Soyinka said Obi employed or demonstrated ‘gbajue’ in going to court to fool his supporters. If the world agreed that Obi’s votes were brazenly stolen in Rivers, then why wouldn’t Obi go to court? Was Obi supposed to allow INEC and the rogues to get away with the heist without a chase? If INEC were allowed to publish one thing on the public portal and announce a different thing to the world, then wouldn’t INEC have been encouraged to continue dancing in the forests?

 I believe Tinubu probably won the elections. But the idea that Obi and the Labour Party had no duty to challenge the flawed process in court is preposterous. Painting the Obidients as obnoxious agents of lies is incredible emotionalism. The entire space is poisoned on all sides.

The conclusion that the court process was not just frivolous but manipulative, seeking to hoodwink the youth into an insurrection is at best a piece of roadside conspiracy theorizing. There are three elephants in the room. An INEC that says one thing and does another without compunction. A buccaneering political class that seeks to win at all costs. A judicial system that has built an unenviable reputation because it houses many Brother Jeros. 

Professor Soyinka is a genius. He is not a bigot. He deserves national respect. But perhaps the blood of the covenant of NADECO is thicker than the water of the womb of democracy.

*Egbujo is a commentator on public issues