Soyinka, however, said in a statement on Monday that the word ‘reconciliation’ inserted into some reports was most inappropriate.
By Jeffrey Agbo
Nobel Laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka, has debunked reports that suggested the presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the February 25 poll, Peter Obi, paid him a visit for reconciliation.
Mr Obi visited Soyinka on Sunday following a clash between the renowned playwright and Obi’s supporters known as Obidients.
Obi said he visited Soyinka to clear “misconceptions” about his supporters’ relationship with the professor.
Soyinka, however, said in a statement on Monday that the word ‘reconciliation’ inserted into some reports was most inappropriate.
“Before it gains traction and embarks on a life of its own, I wish to state clearly that the word ‘Reconciliation’, inserted into some reports of Peter Obi’s visit to me yesterday, Sunday, May 7, is a most inappropriate, and diversionary invocation,” he wrote.
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“Let me clarify: I know the entity known as Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party. I can relate to him. I know and can relate to the Labour Party on whose platform he contested elections. There are simply no issues to reconcile between those two entities and myself. However, I do not know, and am unable to relate to something known as the ‘Obidient’ or ‘Obidient Family’. Thus, albeit in a different vein, any notion of Reconciliation, or even relations – positive, negative or indifferent – with such a spectral emanation is simply grasping at empty air.”
Soyinka said that during that meeting, attended by two other individuals, the word ‘reconciliation’ was never used, neither in itself nor in any other form.
“By contrast, there were expressions of ‘burden of leadership’ ‘responsibility’, ‘apology’, ‘pleading’, ‘formal dissociation from the untenable’, all the way to the ‘tragic ascendancy of ethnic cleavage’, especially under such ironic, untenable circumstances. Discussions were frank, and creative. The notion of Reconciliation was clearly N/A – Non Applicable. It was never raised,” he said.
“The following should be understood, but never underestimated. What remains ineradicable from that weekend of orgiastic rave in the social media was the opening up of the dark, putrid recesses in the national psyche that we like to pretend do not exist. It invited – into minds seeking a grasp on reality – gruesome variations on images from Dante’s Purgatorio.
“A fathomless pit was exposed, at the bottom of which one glimpsed a throng of the damned, writhing in competitive lust for the largest of the gangrenous ladles in a diabolical broth. To peek over the edge of that pit for a prolonged spell was to turn giddy, with a risk of falling into the tureen of inhuman pus. To attempt to navigate one’s way, however gingerly, along a mat spread across the infernal abyss, is an invitation to moral suicide.
“For the serious minded, I call attention to essays I have offered on the theme of Reconciliation based on Truth, and the ethical imperative of Restitution. There will be further elaborations forthcoming in DEMOCRACY PRIMER III – Bookcraft’s INTERVENTION series, now brought forward for publication on June 12, the watershed extorted from the current regime as the nation’s Democracy Day.”
The poet and dramatist added that if he complies with entreaties to ignore new provocations from the Obidients, it would be because he also approves of “Mohammed Ali’s strategy of Rope-a-Dope, where blind menace is left flailing hopelessly at the disdainful manifest of Truth.”