Buzz by Olumide Iyanda
Email: olumide@qed.ng Twitter: @mightyng
Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, did something on Monday, December 5, 2016 that was largely ignored by the media. He took back his criticism of President Muhammadu Buhari’s congratulatory message to the people of Gambia over the outcome of the country’s presidential election.
Having misunderstood a newspaper report, and thinking Yahya Jammeh had manipulated the election held on December 1 to continue his 22-year sit-tight presidency; Soyinka knocked Buhari for “expressing delight at the gallantry shown by Jammeh”. He completely missed the part where the Nigerian leader congratulated Adama Barrow on his victory as president-elect of Gambia.
“It turned out that I had obtained the wrong picture. The torturer and notorious administrator of hallucinogenic broths to citizens had been dethroned. I therefore take back my criticism of Nigeria’s message of congratulations,” Soyinka said in a message personally signed by him.
One did not miss his attempt to use Jammeh’s antecedence to lessen the weight of his faux pas, but he did stress that “Once again, my apologies for the miscommunication.”
Not to put too fine a point on it, Kongi admitted he goofed.
That rare episode of eating the humble pie, however, did not get the attention it deserves because the man himself offered the media something more newsworthy.
The apology came on the same day the international man of letters questioned “the business of any stupid Nigerian” to challenge his right to destroy his American green card following Donald Trump’s shock victory in the US election.
Ironically, the continuous salacious reportage of Soyinka’s renunciation of his American citizenship is due mainly to the laureate’s refusal to do what he did in the case of the Gambia election. Admit that he made a wrong call.
Many were those who expressed apprehension at the likelihood of Trump defeating Hillary Clinton on November 8, 2016.
The real estate tycoon’s campaign ran on bigotry, racism, sexism and just about everything else that is politically incorrect.
How could a man with such baggage defeat the combined Clinton and Obama dynasties?
The media was against him. Celebrities queued behind Mrs Clinton. Women accused him of sexual assault. The list goes on.
It was almost a no-brainer that Trump would lose.
“If in the unlikely event he does win, the first thing he’ll do is to say [that] all green-card holders must reapply to come back into the US. Well, I’m not waiting for that,” Soyinka, a scholar-in-residence at New York University’s Institute of African American Affairs, told students at Oxford University’s Ertegun House.
“The moment they announce his victory, I will cut my green card myself and start packing up.”
Soyinka also spoke against Brexit and delivered a thinly veiled knock on the Nobel Foundation for crowning Bob Dylan as the 2016 laureate, but it was his comments on Trump that attracted global attention.
It came as no surprise therefore that he was reminded of his threat even before Trump was officially declared US president-elect.
Along with Prophet TB Joshua who had predicted a slim victory for Clinton, Soyinka was mocked by internet trolls, many of whom do not have a nodding acquaintance with civility.
To prove that he is a man of his words, the 82-year-old said on the sidelines of an education conference at the University of Johannesburg on December 1 “I have already done it; I have disengaged (from the United States). I have done what I said I would do.
“I had a horror of what is to come with Trump… I threw away the (green) card, and I have relocated, and I’m back to where I have always been.”
If Soyinka’s threat to exit America over the Trump presidency was borne out of moral conviction, his subsequent comments show he does not realise that certain battles are not worth fighting.
“Why do Nigerians wail louder than the bereaved?” he queried on December 1 “What is your business?
“What is the business of any stupid Nigerian to open his or her mouth to challenge my right to say I am leaving? Did you get the green card for me? Do I eat in your house? The arrogance of some Nigerians is overwhelming. I don’t interfere with you, why would you interfere with me?
“One had the impudence to write that he needs a video to reassure him that it’s been done. Video? Are you mad? I don’t know you, I don’t respect you. Do you think I am here to entertain you? They want cheap thrill.”
Unfortunately for Soyinka, he is the one giving faceless trolls that cheap thrill.
Of course, some of those taunting him are supporters of former President Goodluck Jonathan who blame him for what they term his support for Buhari.
Internet sleaze is a thriving business in Nigeria. Many people run multiple fictitious social media accounts to launch attacks on others. The comment section of many online publications are littered with abusive messages by “people whose posts are the same in everything but the names used.
Agonising because “the people on behalf of whom one have struggled for all one’s life can be so slavish in mentality as to start querying the right of their champion to free speech” is needless.
Like some recipients of Soyinka’s scathing criticism in the past know, the best thing to do at times like this is to maintain a dignified silence or “take a chill pill”.
What is the point wasting intellectual energy exchanging words with people who are not half as smart as their smartphones?
A man who has held up a radio station, crossed enemy line during a war and marched against the worst dictatorship in Nigeria should know that some battles are better discontinued.
Like he did with the Gambia case, Soyinka should give the green card matter a rest, no matter the amount of provocation from “slugs”, “millipedes”, “imbeciles”, “barbarians” and “blabbermouths”.
The internet lives for the next scandal. That is why people have stopped talking about TB Joshua’s prophecy.
