Wole Soyinka: When Criticism Becomes A Vendetta

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Nigeria's only Nobel laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka has been reviled by many who support the Jonathan administration because he criticized it and did a 180 degree turn to write an article supporting the candidacy of Muhammadu Buhari whom he had strongly criticized before against incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan.
 
Wole Soyinka has been accused of bigotry, labeled as senile and now, his name is being dragged through the mud pool of corruption due to a dinner in his honor thrown by Amaechi while he was Governor of Rivers State.
 
Since he cannot be accused of mismanagement – talk to Rotimi Amaechi about the alleged 82 million spent, we are being told that integrity ought to have made Soyinka refuse that honor when salaries were unpaid in the state.
 
The problem with those who criticize in such a way is we never hear them throw out such integrity standards at Goodluck Ebele Jonathan and his administration which used public funds to run for office at a time Nigerians were dying through various means because funding was unavailable for something vital. Please expand that as you will.
 
If you cannot blame GEJ for attending a party while Boko Haram was carrying out its most dastardly acts and you take up arms over this, you should know the title to apply to yourself. It becomes nothing more than vendetta when tenuous attachments are being made in a smear campaign which this obviously is. If Wole Soyinka had refused to attend, some other form of criticism would most likely be drawn out from that decision.
 
"What a snub! Wole Soyinka is definitely a bigot! He cannot bear to be seen with people from the South South at a dinner in his honor!"
 
That is a very probable response. In this, there is no way the Prof can win because polarization of the Nigerian polity is so extreme now; every step is being used as leverage for or against by either side of the divide.
 
Let the man be. Focus on those who actually took what was not theirs to take, robbing many Nigerians of what should have been rightfully theirs, including their lives. You are straining out a gnat while swallowing a camel.
 
 
 
 
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