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
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