Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka has described the
Igbos as people who can be predicted when it comes
to voting. According to him, the Igbos vote based on
their stomach and have an incurable money
mindedness. Prof. Soyinka said this while delivering
a lecture titled 'Predicting Nigeria, Electoral Ironies'
at Harvard University Hutchins Centre for African and
African American Research", in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, USA.
"Igbos remained unrepentant and resolute
towards their strategic objective of secession
at worst; or a Nigerian president of Igbo
extraction at best," he said at the lecture
which held on April 29.
"The climax of MASSOB's war against the
Nigerian state was the call for sit-ins and civil
disobedience that shut down markets and
public services, as Igbos stayed at home in a
symbolic gesture to assert Biafran
independence. The call was honoured by
governors in the two principal Ibo states,
though without fanfare. The Igbos are
probably the only group of Nigerians that you
can predict with great accuracy whom they
will vote for in an election, because they tend
to put their votes where their stomachs take
them; suffering as it were, from incurable
money-mindedness, as they would stop at
nothing in their quest for personal financial
gain. Muhammadu Buhari was the better of the
two evils as the incumbent president Goodluck
Jonathan had been an unmitigated disaster
and failure. It was a painful decision to tell
people to vote Buhari, but the country needed
a new beginning. I was more against
Jonathan, than I was pro-Buhari. "Nothing is
more unworthy of leadership than to degrade a
system by which one attains fulfillment, and
this is what the nation witnessed time and
time again under Jonathan, who was
increasingly becoming intolerant of opposition
in an escalating streak of impunity and
authoritarian madness, which was most
blatant and unconscionable. The 'militricians'
– soldiers turned politicians in power – aren't
looking for excellence; their civilian cohorts
are worse. Short cuts and how to circumvent
the system for the profit of a few are the norm
of governance. Those who do honest work are
derided as lacking the skill to fit it. Ironically,
things haven't quite changed a bit after 16
years of democracy in the country." he said
Source: The Cable
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