By Dan Amor
In a feat of acerbic verbal tantrums, Nobel Laureate Professor Wole Soyinka Tuesday December 2, attacked President Goodluck Jonathan and likened the Nigerian leader to Nebuchadnezzar, the Biblical autocrat and king ofBabylon
who initially denounced the Living Supreme God. Soyinka who addressed a press
conference on the state of the nation at the popular Freedom
Garden in Lagos , said that Jonathan is tyrannical
because the Inspector General of Police, Suleiman Abba, stopped the attempt by
the defected speaker of the House of Representatives, Aminu Tambuwal, to enter
the Green Chamber of the National Assembly with thugs. The respected professor
of dramatic literature who is clearly biased in his recent pronouncements given
his current alignment with top leaders of the opposition political party, the
All Progressives Congress (APC), said so many unprintable things against the
administration of President Jonathan.
In a feat of acerbic verbal tantrums, Nobel Laureate Professor Wole Soyinka Tuesday December 2, attacked President Goodluck Jonathan and likened the Nigerian leader to Nebuchadnezzar, the Biblical autocrat and king of
*President Jonathan and Prof Soyinka
Indeed, the distinguished playwright is entitled to his opinion especially in a wide democratic space in which freedom of association and of speech is the norm. But it is unfortunate that the renowned literary icon could allow his judgment to be beclouded by ahistorical considerations. By this recent act of likening Jonathan to Nebuchadnezzar, Soyinka has come down from his Olympian height as a global citizen and statesman to the sheer pedestrian rabble of petty villainy and rancour. It is a pointer to the fact that every great intellectual has his weak points. Our own Kongi is no exception. Even with the unsavory political development in Anambra State in 2004 which led to the unfortunate withdrawal of the security personnel of former Governor Chris Ngige after his attempted abduction by the police, no Nigerian, not even Professor Chinua Achebe who rejected former President Olusegun Obasanjo's national award due to that crisis, went as far as comparing the former President with Nebuchadnezzar.