The Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has said that he has no
respect for Obasanjo, who he described as an indescribable liar.
Soyinka carpeted the former president on Friday night when he
was responding to questions during a programme tagged: ‘An
evening with Wole Soyinka’, organised by Globacom.
Asked to respond to Obasanjo’s assessment of him in the
former president’s book titled ‘My Watch’, where he notes that
Soyinka is good at hunting and wines but a political illiterate,
Soyinka said that he was hardly bothered because he believed
that Obasanjo was a liar.
Soyinka said, “Obasanjo is entitled to his opinion. But the
question is: ‘Who respects the opinion of a liar?’
I can spend the whole night proving that he is a liar. Obasanjo
was once described by an economist, the late Prof Ojetunji
Aboyade, as an economic illiterate. They nearly ‘went into blow’
that night. It was Prof. Mabogunje who separated them.
“So, if an economic illiterate calls somebody a political
illiterate, no problem at all.
“In ‘ My Watch’, Obasanjo told the first lie when he said he
deplored lies. Anybody who said he never plotted to have an
unconstitutional third term in office, even as a writer, I need a
word to describe him.”
The former President and the Nobel laureate have been in a
running battle taking swipes at each other over a lingering issue
between them. Obasanjo had once stated that Soyinka once
vowed that the differences between the two of them would not
be resolved on earth.
Obasanjo had also in his book, My Watch, and at public events
described Soyinka as an expert in wine matters than in political
analysis.
He had said, “For Wole, no one can be good, nor can anything
be spot-on politically except that which emanates from him or
is ordained by him. His friends and loved ones will always be
right and correct, no matter what they do or fail to do. He is
surely a better wine connoisseur and a more successful aparo
(guinea fowl) hunter than a political critic.
“Wole Soyinka is a gifted man. I have always acknowledged
that but he is a bad politician and I have also always said that.
That is my own point of view. He may agree with it, he may not
agree with it. For instance, I know that if I want somebody to
give me the best wine, one of the people I will go to is Wole
Soyinka and I know he has a taste for good wine and I said that
in the book.”
However, last year December, shortly after the book went public,
Soyinka had, in a piece titled, ‘Watch and Pray, Watch and
Prey’, vehemently protested such a description (of him), calling
Obasanjo ‘’an expert liar, who lies to boost his ego.’’
But in an interview granted a private television station,
Channels, on a programme tagged, ‘Book Club’, Obasanjo, while
holding on to his words, said what he wrote about Soyinka was
purely his view, adding that Soyinka did not have to agree with
him.
