Soyinka: There was conspiracy to annul 2023 presidential poll

Wole Soyinka, the Nobel laureate, says there was an attempt to annul the 2023 presidential election as was done by Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida, former head of state, in 1993. 

During an interview on Channels Television on Wednesday, Soyinka said people who were calling for an interim government were determined to allow history repeat itself.

Commenting on the remarks of Datti Baba-Ahmed, vice-presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 election, Soyinka said it was “a disgraceful interview”.

After Bola Tinubu, the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), was announced winner of the election, Baba-Ahmed had said the country had no president-elect yet.

He said Tinubu would be leading an unconstitutional government if sworn in because “he did not meet the requirements of the law”.

The Nobel laureate criticised the comment, saying at that time, the contest was no longer for democracy but “an individual contest for power”.

“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,” he said.

“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.

“History was about to repeat itself, some people were determined to take us back to those days.

“So, for me, 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.”

Soyinka also described Baba-Ahmed’s interview as “menacing”.

“At that interview by Datti, that disgraceful and menacing interview, was for me the ultimate signal because this was somebody calling for the rubbishing of a structure he profited to ever become a governor,” Soyinka added.

“I am talking about Peter Obi. Even before the tribunal had said… , this spokesperson, in this case Datti, came on the television to threaten everyone if his interpretation of results was not upheld.

“This for me was amoral, politically and socially amoral, it was playing into a certain script, even if they didn’t know it.

“Sometimes democracy leaves the stage for an individual contest for power and then commences its own struggle for existence or actualisation.”