Soyinka disowns Buhari comments attributed to him

Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka, has denied making comments in an interview about President Muhammadu Buhari’s one year in office.

In a statement on Tuesday, Mr. Soyinka described a report quoting him as declaring his support to Mr. Buhari as a “disgusting forgery”.

“Once again, I notify the security arms of Nigeria about this increasingly obsessed exercise in identity forgery,” Mr. Soyinka said in a brief statement.

The report quoted the literature professor as saying he had faith in the president “to stop the unprecedented bleeding of the country from never-seen looting in history.”

“We couldn’t just continue to have a country that rewarded criminals like the past administration openly and obscenely did,” the report claimed Mr. Soyinka said.

“We needed a Buhari to put his legendary stamp of integrity to drive governance and in one year there is a new lease of life in the way government business is now conducted.

“On economy we have believed lies of GDP and statistics built on falsehood for too long. Corruption was driving the economy as the working capital while petrol-dollars gave us a false sense of insularity,” the report continued.

“Everything just crashed on us without the money from oil like it used to be. Years of mismanagement all came to hunt us and very bad too.

“With Buhari having used the last 12 months for housekeeping, the trajectory of the economy will continue to go north with more hard work and faithful implementation of government programmes,” it concluded.

But Mr. Soyinka denied making such statement in any interview.

“I alert the public to beware of the danger this portends in the murky atmosphere of Nigeria’s ongoing politics,” he said.

“The sycophants of power and influence will clearly do anything to gain attention and preferment, but they only earn the contempt of decent citizens, including those on whom they foist their unsolicited services.”