Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has called
out former President Olusegun Obasanjo again in
his new book titled ‘Quis Custodiet Ipsos
Custodes?: Gani’s Unfinished Business’ which
was officially released to the public by Bookcraft
on Tuesday.
It formed the text of his speech at the 10th memorial lecture of the
late Chief Gani Fawehinmi where he said, ‘I know that deep inside,
there is a soakaway pond of personal insecurity struggling to be
drained. Beneath every bully, there is a scared product of
insecurity and troubled conscience. Now, fight your own demons
as best as you can, and feel free to flagellate Buhari (President
Muhammadu) with all the weapons in your armoury. I have only
one demand: keep away from movements struggling to restore this
nation to the path of sanity and even moderate rectitude. End your
hijacking propensity.”
The renowned playwright also described the Presidential Library in
Abeokuta, Ogun State, built by Obasanjo as ‘Presidential
Laundromat’, alleging that it was constructed with fraud…
“That structure in Abeokuta remains a moral eyesore to those who
were in a position to obtain even a glimmering of the proceedings
that inflicted such a purulent carbuncle on the landscape of my
state, Ogun. However, even the grossest evil can be turned to
some good.
When we were school pupils, one of our illustrated reading texts
was one entitled, ‘This is the house that Jack built.’ Today, and
forevermore, generations will point to that thing which I have
daubed the Presidential Laundromat and say: This is the house
that Fraud built.”
Soyinka also asked if someone with Obasanjo’s ‘governance
record dare accuse anyone of failing to rise to the challenges of
governance. ‘I dare Obasanjo to meet me one-on-one on any
podium to present the facts of that stewardship to the Nigerian
people… Just how did you, in eight years, rise to the challenges of
power generation for a population of a hundred and fifty million
people, endowed with enormous energy resources…
“Eight years-repeat, eight years in office, and the elected estate
manager of this vast territory could not even provide the modicum
level of power to activate even a low-level cottage industrial
culture. And such individual has the nerve to sermonise about
rising to challenges.”
He also noted that the allegation of corruption against Obasanjo
by a former Abia State governor, Chief Orji Kalu, should be formally
addressed, adding “again, we are also duty bound to point out
that the author of that damning expose is himself standing trial on
charges of corruption. We are aware that this pioneer letter-writer
has been summoned by the EFCC to substantiate his claims.”
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