PUNCH
Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, on Wednesday, said there was a conspiracy to annul the 2023 presidential election.
While referring to the 1993 election cancelled by former military dictator Ibrahim Babangida (retd.), Soyinka said, “History was about to repeat itself, some people were determined to take us back to those days.”
The Independent National Electoral Commission had declared Bola Tinubu, as President.
Tinubu, a former Lagos State governor, was declared winner after polling 8,794,726 votes to win the 2023 presidential election.
The Nigerian playwright who spoke on Channels Television on Wednesday, said, “I am alleging that there was a conspiracy from the very beginning before the election to make sure the elections did not take place or that even if the voting did take place, that everything be reverted to what happened under Babangida.
“When we all just woke up and discovered that even though the results have been calculated, even though the results were in possession of international bodies, including monitoring embassies and so on, even if we had the results directly, it was suddenly annulled.”
He added that to him, “it was no longer a contest between individuals, it was now a contest between the so-called interim political party and democracy.
“When you have a binary like that, I have no doubt or hesitation about what side of the barricade my position should be.”
While reacting to the comment of the vice-presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 election, Datti Baba-Ahmed, Soyinka said it was “a disgraceful interview”.
Baba-Ahmed, a former House of Representatives member had asked the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Kayode Ariwoola, not to swear in Tinubu as duly elected president of the country.
