By Williams Amofokhai
Prof. Wole Soyinka has said the split in the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, shortly before the presidential election costs Peter Obi and Atiku Abubakar the presidential election.
Obi had before the presidential election defected to Labour Party and succeeded in winning the strong base of the PDP in the South East and some parts of South South.
The combined votes of Obi and Atiku would have given the PDP a landslide victory at the presidential poll.
The Nobel Laureate had on Wednesday in Cape Town, South Africa said Obi did not win the 2023 presidential election as he claimed.
But Labour Party had attacked him for his comment, saying it was unbecoming of a man of his caliber.
Soyinka, in a statement on Saturday said “the mistake we all continue to make is our insistence on regarding the recent Nigerian elections as an adversarial thriller. The contrary is the truth.
”The ballot tally accurately reflected what happens when a politi-cal party splits itself in two, especially so critically close to an election. What promised to be a spectacular contest is transformed into a Feast of Voluntary Donation of the spoils of war.”
According to him, “That, however, is not always the ultimate destination – the re-gifting may continue, prodded by a sudden surge of regret. There remains, lurking in the background, a far more potent beneficiary.
“In this case, we easily recall it as the unregistered but loudly canvassed IPP – the Interim Peoples Party, usually to be found in bed with the military. The notorious Datti interview, menacing, intimidating and unambigu-ous, sets the scene for such re-entry.
“Then, history repeats itself over and over again, as currently manifested along the West African sub-region. The “call to arms” is made literal by those whose trade is pre-cisely that of arms.”
Soyinka stated that barring such abrupt “patriotic intervention”, however, the last word belonged to the Supreme Court.
He contended that until that conclusive hour, wherever and whenever the subject turns to the Nigerian elections, “my contribu-tion can be taken for granted in advance: Peter Obi did not win the Nigerian 2023 elections. Jointly with his erstwhile colleague of the PDP, Abubakar Atiku, they donated the outcome, even before the vot-ing.”
“Let politicians and their cohorts learn to take responsibility for the consequences of their choices within democratic options,” he added.
