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Akinwande Soji-Ojo
Nobel Laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka, has alleged that there was a conspiracy to annul the result of the 2023 presidential election.
The playwright, who spoke on Channels Television programme, ‘Sunrise Daily,’ on Wednesday, said: “I am alleging that there was a conspiracy from the very beginning before the election to make sure the elections did not take place or that even if the voting did take place, that everything be reverted to what happened under Babangida.
“When we all just woke up and discovered that even though the results have been calculated, even though the results were in possession of international bodies, including monitoring embassies and so on, even if we had the results directly, it was suddenly annulled.”
While referring to the 1993 election annulled by former military president, Gen Ibrahim Babangida (rtd.), Soyinka said: “History was about to repeat itself; some people were determined to take us back to those days.”
He continued: “It was no longer a contest between individuals, it was now a contest between the so-called interim political party and democracy.
“When you have a binary like that, I have no doubt or hesitation about what side of the barricade my position should be.”
While reacting to the comment of the vice presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Datti Baba-Ahmed, on the 2023 election, Soyinka said it was “a disgraceful interview.”
Baba-Ahmed, a former member of the House of Representatives had asked the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Kayode Ariwoola, not to swear in President Bola Tinubu as duly elected president of the country.
Soyinka described Baba-Ahmed’s comment as “disgraceful and menacing”.
“That interview by Datti, that disgraceful and menacing interview, was for me the ultimate signal because this was somebody calling for the rubbishing of a structure he had profited from in the past,” he said.