Peter Obi’s visit not about reconciliation – Soyinka

The Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, said on Monday the Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi’s visit was not for reconciliation contrary to insinuation in several quarters.

The former Anambra State governor visited Soyinka on Sunday a few weeks after his supporters criticised the playwright for condemning remarks credited to the LP vice-presidential candidate, Datti Baba-Ahmed, on the February 25 presidential election.

Baba-Ahmed had in a television interview urged President Muhammadu Buhari and the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Kayode Ariwoola, to stay away from the May 29 handover ceremony in Abuja following the resentments that trailed the conduct of the election.

Many had described the LP candidate’s visit as a subtle move by the party to pacify the Nobel laureate following criticisms by its supporters.

However, Soyinka disagreed with the opinion in a statement titled: “A visitation and the allure of Reconciliation.”

He said: “Before it gains traction and embarks on a life of its own, I wish to state clearly that the word ‘Reconciliation’, inserted into some reports of Peter Obi’s visit to me yesterday, Sunday, May 7, is a most inappropriate, and diversionary invocation.

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“Let me clarify: I know the entity known as Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party. I can relate to him. I know and can relate to the Labour Party on whose platform he contested elections. There are simply no issues to reconcile between those two entities and myself.

“However, I do not know, and am unable to relate to something known as the ‘Obidient’ or ‘Obidient Family’. Thus, albeit in a different vein, any notion of Reconciliation, or even relations – positive, negative or indifferent – with such a spectral emanation is simply grasping at empty air.

“During that meeting, attended by two other individuals only, the word ‘Reconciliation’ was never bruited, neither in itself nor in any other form. It simply did not arise.

“By contrast, there were expressions of ‘burden of leadership’ ‘responsibility’, ‘apology’, ‘pleading’, ‘formal dissociation from the untenable’, all the way to the ‘tragic ascendancy of ethnic cleavage’, especially under such ironic, untenable circumstances. Discussions were frank and creative. The notion of Reconciliation was clearly N/A – Non Applicable. It was never raised.”

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