Home ART & ENTERTAINMENT There Is No End To Obasanjo’s Capacity For Infantile Mischief, Soyinka Blows...

There Is No End To Obasanjo’s Capacity For Infantile Mischief, Soyinka Blows Hot Again

Soyinka and Obasanjo

The end of personal vendetta and throwing of invectives by the Noble Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka and former Nigeria President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, at each other is not yet on sight.

Professor Soyinka, in his latest book, titled: InterInterventions: Between Defective Memory and the Public Lie – A Personal Odyssey in the Republic of Liars described Chief Obasanjo as an overgrown child of circumstance.

Professor Soyinka’s book, which was presented in Abeokuta, Ogun State at the weekend was obviously a reaction to Obasanjo’s latest biography, titled, My Watch, described in InterInterventions as Three-Carat Watch.

While Soyinka said that he used to be friendly with Obasanjo and admitted in the book that some stakeholders were making efforts to reconcile them, he said he owed it a responsibility to fundamentally respond to lies that Obasanjo allegedly told against him.

“However, it does appear to me that there is no end to this individual’s capacity for infantile mischief, and for needless, mind-boggling provocations, such as his recent ‘literary’ intrusion on my peace.

“I brainstormed with him over meals both when he was military Head of State – in Dodan Barracks and in his home, Ota – for some time after he left office and early in Aso Rock at his ‘second coming.’ Today, it is a different situation. If he offered to host me, I would wait until he had first swallowed a morsel from the same dish.

“I had fully attuned myself to the fact that our Owu retiree soldier and prolific author is an infliction that those of us who share the same era and nation space must learn to endure.”

Professor Soyinka said that during the conversation, he commended Obasanjo for the creative way he had developed the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, which Soyinka, however, described as a Presidential Laundromat and a product of executive extortion.

Soyinka, who chronicled the various places his path had met with that of Obasanjo since childhood, insisted that the lies in which the former President allegedly thrived were so unthinkable that he and some other people had started working on another book solely focusing on Obasanjo.

He questioned the godliness to which Obasanjo professed and claimed that the former President indulged in identity theft.

“Our author invokes God tirelessly, without provocation, without necessity and without justification, perhaps preemptively, but does he really believe in such an entity? Does our home-bred Double-O-Seven believe in anything outside his own Omnipotence? Could he possibly have mistaken the Christian exhortation – ‘Watch and Pray’ – for his own private inclination to ‘Watch and Prey? This is a seasoned predator on others’ achievements. He preys on their names, their characters, their motivations, their true lives; preys on gossip and preys on contributions to collective undertakings – even preys on their identities, substituting his own where possible.” [myad]

 

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