‘End Your Hijacking Propensity,’ Soyinka Attacks Obasanjo Again

Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, has lashed former President Olusegun Obasanjo over his struggle to “restore Nigeria to the path of sanity and moderate rectitude.”

Describing him as ‘objectively unfitted’ for the role, the playwright said the former president is free to criticize President Muhammadu Buhari as much as he want, but he must keep away from his “hijacking propensity.”

In the latest of his interventions series, Interventions VIII, titled ‘Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?: Gani’s Unfinished Business’ officially released to the public by Bookcraft on Tuesday, Soyinka urged him to instead head for a monastery.

Soyinka said, “I know that deep inside, there is a soakaway pond of personal insecurity struggling to be drained. Beneath every bully, there is a scared product of insecurity and troubled conscience. Now, fight your own demons as best as you can, and feel free to flagellate Buhari (President Muhammadu) with all the weapons in your armoury. I have only one demand: keep away from movements struggling to restore this nation to the path of sanity and even moderate rectitude. End your hijacking propensity.’’

He also accused Obasanjo of using fraudulent proceeds in the construction of the Presidential Library in Abeokuta, Ogun State.

He said, “That structure in Abeokuta remains a moral eyesore to those who were in a position to obtain even a glimmering of the proceedings that inflicted such a purulent carbuncle on the landscape of my state, Ogun.

“However, even the grossest evil can be turned to some good. When we were school pupils, one of our illustrated reading texts was one entitled, ‘This is the house that Jack built.’ Today, and forevermore, generations will point to that thing which I have daubed the Presidential Laundromat and say: This is the house that Fraud built.’’

Continuing, Soyinka said, “I dare Obasanjo to meet me one-on-one on any podium to present the facts of that stewardship to the Nigerian people… Just how did you, in eight years, rise to the challenges of power generation for a population of a hundred and fifty million people, endowed with enormous energy resource.

“Eight years-repeat, eight years in office, and the elected estate manager of this vast territory could not even provide the modicum level of power to activate even a low-level cottage industrial culture. And such individual has the nerve to sermonise about rising to challenges.’’

This is not the first time Soyinka is attacking the ex-president. In June, the Nobel laureate said Obasanjo is least worthy of former Heads of State to champion the political recovery process of the nation.