Nobel Laureate winner, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has claimed President Bola Tinubu ignored his advice not to run for presidency in 2023.
Soyinka stated this when he paid a courtesy visit to Tinubu at his Lagos home.
He said he was there to see how the President and his wife are doing after ignoring his advice.
The literary professor said he has submitted a seven point agenda to the President during the visit he described as an “embarrassing” one.
“I came here with a seven-point agenda. And we had a very thorough discussion on those items,” Soyinka told reporters after the visit.
“Actually, it’s an embarrassing visit because when I visited him the last time, it was to try and persuade him not to run for office. I told Atiku and himself to please leave the ground so young people could run. That’s the last time we met about five years ago.
“So I came to see how he was doing after ignoring my advice. I came to see how both he and his wife were weathering Nigeria, and to wish them a Happy Christmas.”
Soyinka was a staunch critic of Tinubu’s predecessor, President Muhammadu Buhari.
He slammed Buhari for the failure of his government to blame and act decisively against Fulani herdsmen for the killings of scores of people in communities in and around the country’s Middle Belt region.
There was an increase in attacks and killings in farming communities in Taraba, Benue, Adamawa and Kaduna States blamed.
Many of the attacks were blamed on Fulani herdsmen, although Fulani communities were also victims of attacks by other ethnic groups.
In the piece titled “Impunity Rides Again”, Mr. Soyinka did not mince words over the government’s seeming reluctance to blame the herdsmen for the series of killings.
He likened it to the initial disbelief of Mr. Buhari’s predecessor, Goodluck Jonathan, when the so-called Chibok Girls were kidnapped from their school dorm by Boko Haram militia.
“President Muhammed Buhari and his government – including his inspector-general of police – in near identical denial, appear to believe that killer herdsmen who strike again and again at will from one corner of the nation to the other, are merely hot-tempered citizens whose scraps occasionally degenerate into ‘communal clashes’ – I believe I have summarised him accurately. The marauders are naughty children who can be admonished, paternalistically, into good neighbourly conduct. Sometimes, of course, the killers were also said be non-Nigerians after all. The contradictions are mind-boggling,” he wrote.
