Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, Monday, vowed to hold a private funeral on January 20, 2017, the day the United States President-elect, Donald Trump, will be sworn in, threatening to also move his foundation out of Nigeria in protest against negative commentaries generated by his Green Card.
The 82-year-old had last week in Johannesburg, South Africa announced that he had destroyed his Green Card to protest the election of Trump in the US presidential election of November 8.
A visibly angry Soyinka, who spoke in Lagos about the controversy that arose over his threat to destroy his American residency permit, said the private wake will have nothing to do with US politics but the death of common sense among Nigerians.
“I’m going to hold a private wake on inauguration day not to mourn the decision of Americans in the choice of President but to mourn the death of Nigeria common sense,” he said.
He said the commentaries generated, especially on social media, by his threat to destroy his Green Card might force him to “Wolexit”, a term coined by the literary icon after the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom.
Soyinka, who had earlier used the term to describe his decision to quit the US, however, said he had not decided the nature the “Wolexit” might take as it could either be internal (which would see him withdrawing to his Abeokuta sanctuary (Ijegba), external, or mixed.
Describing the whole controversy as a “theatre of the absurd,” Soyinka said he was puzzled that it was something even worth the fuss it generated.
“I hope to leave here today with a little knowledge. I’m puzzled and I don’t know what the fuss is all about.
“Why do you wail more than the bereaved? I’m addressing these illiterates who feel they want to make themselves heard,’’ he said.
He said destroying his Green Card was not the first time he had undertaken such gesture to express his reservation over certain issues, narrating how he destroyed his national medal during a protest at the Race Course (also known as Tafawa Balewa Square) in Lagos during a protest he undertook with late Tai Solarin.
He said: “I took out my national honour medal and I stamped on it. I could have done something else but I would be accused of indecent exposure.
“Trump is not really my problem. What really matters is the rhetoric that got him there especially against Nigerians.
“People react in their own ways and I don’t go fighting them for it. Expression is not only by words but it (is) also by actions.
“When I take such actions, I don’t want people on behalf of whom we took these actions to express themselves in vulgar manner.’’
