You’re Dishonest! Soyinka Slams Obasanjo Over Restructuring Statement

Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka has slammed former President Olusegun Obasanjo for “trivialising” the agitations for restructuring in the country.

Soyinka, who said Nigeria was “long overdue for reconfiguring,” suggested that only “dishonest” citizens would shy away from decentralisation in the country.

His reaction comes after Obasanjo said on a national television that rather than the country’s restructuring, Nigerians need to restructure their “mentality, mind, and understanding” of the country instead.

“I cannot be part of it,” Obasanjo had told Channels Television.

But Soyinka reacted thus:

“I find it very dishonest and cheap time-serving, trivialising the issue when I hear expressions like ‘it is the mind that needs to be restructured.’ Who is arguing or denying that? Why bring it up? Why is it a substitute?

“We are talking about the protocols of association of the constitutive parts of a nation. We are talking of decentralisation. That is another word. This country is over-centralised.

“Are you saying we cannot reconstruct the mind and reconstruct the nation at the same time? Call it by whatever name. We are saying that this nation is long overdue for reconfiguring. That is the expression I choose to use now.’’

Similarly, Governor Ayodele Fayose, at the recently held Yoruba Summit, lampooned Obasanjo for downplaying the agitations for restructuring of the country.