A psychiatrist should examine me, should I join Obasanjo’s CNM –Soyinka

Nigerian playwright and Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, has said that he would need to be examined by a psychiatrist, if for any reason, he joins the Coalition for Nigeria Movement (CNM) as proposed by former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

Obasanjo had in his letter to President Muhammadu Buhari advising him to jettison the idea of seeking re-election, proposed the movement as a force Nigerians should embrace to ensure that neither Buhari’s All Progressives Congress (APC), nor the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), who according to him have all disappointed Nigerians, wins the 2019 presidential election.

But Soyinka who spoke in an interview with BBC Yoruba on Monday when asked if he would consider joining CNM, said that the coalition was not meant for someone like him.

He said, “Me? Obasanjo would establish a group and I will become a member of such group? That means they should get a psychiatrist to examine me.”

Speaking on the separate letters by Obasanjo and a former military President, Ibrahim Babangida, to Buhari advising him to quit and not seek re-election, Soyinka said, “When these soldiers begin to speak, we are supposed to get suspicious and ask what exactly do they have in mind? It is possible that what they have in mind is different from what we have in mind.

“You can look at it from two perspectives, the messenger and the message. The message should be examined closely. We should not look at the misdeeds of the messenger alone. Let’s start by asking, is he saying the truth or telling lies, or is he being tricky?

“If he is saying the truth and talking about things that are beneficial to the masses, we would allow that be. After that, we would now look at the person speaking, what is in his mind? …even if it’s a little child who is speaking, as far as that child is saying the truth, we won’t ask the child to keep quiet.

“We won’t ask the child what do you know? We would listen. It is the same situation with those who have presided over the affairs of this nation without making significant progress.

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“We have seen their weaknesses, we have seen their nakedness in public, if they now want to be covered by saying that they have turned a new leaf, we would examine that, too. What I am saying in essence is that what they have said should also be examined.”

Soyinka then called on the youth to come together and present a candidate to represent them.

He said, “We have a lot of them. It is the turn of the younger ones. If they come together, as we speak, if they can start now and bring out one individual among them, we will work with him.

“We are going to give them the support they need to transform the country. People like us are supposed to sit somewhere.”

 

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