In a recent interview granted to The Guardian newspaper, Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, gave his assessment of 14 years of democratic rule, and the Goodluck Jonathan administration in particular.
In the inimitable way that the literary maestro has mastered, he said in response to a question on Pres. Jonathan’s tenure that it was filled with “unforced errors.”
In his words: “How would I assess his tenure? I think there is an expression in tennis: “ unforced errors”, when two people are playing, and when one outplays the other, there are certain strokes called “unforced errors” —- unnecessary, avoidable. A product of sloppy thinking or over-confidence. I call them “unforced errors”.
“There are many promises, first of all, unfulfilled. One, of course, is power (electricity). The issue of power, so essential to the generation of the economy; for the maintenance of the existing level of the economy. The problem till now has not been solved. There are many infrastructural examples of that. It’s scandalous, for instance, that the artery to the rest of the nation, the Expressway from Lagos to the interior, is in such decrepit state. It’s a disgrace to any regime, to the former presidents of this nation, whether you talk of Yar’Adua or Obasanjo. It’s humiliating for the entire nation. Nowhere else in the world can that happen. I repeat, nowhere else in the world, either in this continent or Asia or Europe is such a critical artery, the road to the rest of the nation, left in such a decrepit state without a president either hanging his Minister of Works or committing hara-kiri. This is just one example.
“Unforced errors include, for instance, the whole attitude of petroleum supply. The issue of fuel subsidy etc,etc.
“There have been many high-handed actions which are totally unexpected from a democratically elected president. I refer, for instance, to the action during the oil subsidy protests when suddenly armed Police and the army were sent to take over a public square which does not even belong to the Federal Government but belongs to a state where people were demonstrating, protesting a glaring deformity in governance… I give those examples as governance by unforced errors.”
Soyinka also accused the current administration of veering towards high-handedness.
“It’s been commented upon and I agree that there is certain high handedness, some actions are being taken. We are witnessing a repeat of some of the conduct of Olusegun Obasanjo who not only subverted the judiciary but virtually began to indirectly militarise the nation by certain forms of arbitrary actions,” he said.
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