Nobel
Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has said he believes that the President-elect,
Muhammadu Buhari, cannot be worse than past presidents because he will be
guided by a sense of history.
He, however,
said that he “is cautiously optimistic” about Buhari’s performance.
Soyinka said
this while delivering a lecture titled, ‘Predicting Nigeria, Electoral Ironies’
at the Harvard University Hutchins Centre for African and African American
Research in the United States, according to a gazette by the institution.
According to Punch, a former US
Ambassador to Nigeria, Walter Carrington, had asked Soyinka if Buhari could
reform Nigeria like the late Singaporean leader, Lee Kuan Yew.
In his
response, Soyinka said he was optimistic. He added that Buhari might deal
ruthlessly with corrupt politicians.
Soyinka
said, “I am very, very cautiously optimistic.”
He predicted
that Buhari would be influenced by those around him to “keep his nose to the
letter of the law. In his zeal to absolutely eradicate corruption, he might
take advantage of ambiguous areas in the law and the constitution to empower
himself to deal very ruthlessly and quickly with those who have robbed the
nation blind.”
Soyinka
reasoned that Buhari was unlikely to do worse than his predecessors.
He, however,
said it would be naive for Nigerians to think that Buhari is the messiah.
He said, “I
think that Buhari has a sense of history. He knows that he must make a mark, a
very positive mark, on Nigeria to be able to live with himself, or die with a
clean conscience. We must make sure that Nigerians are not allowed to forget
his past. They should not think that the messiah has finally arrived.
“I think we
stay on guard and continue to do what has needed to be done for the past 20
years or so.”
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