Nigeria’s literary giant, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has scored President Muhammadu Buhari as “the best” in the country’s war against corruption.
Soyinka made his position known in an interview with the BBC on its programme: Hardtalk, anchored by Zeinab Badawi.
He said: “We have this issue of corruption, which is… and I frankly despise those who try to trivialise it in Nigeria simply because they don’t like the face of the man who is behind it.
“But it’s no longer business as usual in Nigeria because we have bankers who are on trial, we have legislators who are on trial and we have former governors who are on trial.
“Immediately they step out of the office, they are grabbed by the anti-corruption agencies.
“On corruption, as far as I’m concerned, he scored the best.”
Speaking on the war against terror, Soyinka said: “Take for instance, the issue of Boko Haram, if action had been taken at the beginning, and we are not talking about the time of the reign of Jonathan, when the first governor decided to make his state a theocratic state… that was when action should have been taken.
“The president of that time compromised because he was ambitious and he needed the support of the state governor.
“And when you start a theocracy, a movement will berth and killings will start.
“They start saying, that you are not holy enough and the killings start.”
ON the farmers-herders clashes, Soyinka said: “Well, he is making progress, but then another problem has sprung up and that is where the problem is.
“Yes, he is very slow in responding.
“Buhari has failed in that respect.”
The Nobel laureate also defended his support for Buhari during the 2015 election, saying he was a better option to stop Dr. Goodluck Jonathan who, he said, was not doing enough to pilot the affairs of the country as President.
Soyinka said: “General Buhari didn’t really win…, he won by default because it was impossible to continue with Jonathan.
“Yes, I did use that expression: born-again democrat.
“The reason I used that expression is because when somebody competes in an election first time, second time, third time, fourth time and persists, he must believe in democracy.
“First of all, Nigeria is not peculiar in that respect.
“We’ve had examples like that everywhere.
“We’ve had many military people doing that.
“So, the transition is not impossible.
“On the second circumstance, the fact that Nigeria has shown the military what a huge failure they were, makes it possible for one to identify the possibility of exception.
“In any case, I keep emphasising that Nigerians had difficulty of making a choice.
“Like I said, it was between the devil and the deep blue sea.”