There was a plot to nullify Tinubu’s election – Soyinka

Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, on Wednesday, January 17, 2024, alleged that there was a conspiracy to annul the 2023 presidential election.

He, however, did not mention names, groups, or institutions that plotted the annulment that did not take place.

In a veiled reference to the 1993 election that was annulled by former military President, General Ibrahim Babangida (retd.), Soyinka noted that history almost repeated itself as some people were determined to take the country back to the dark days.

Soyinka, who stated these when he featured on Channels Television programme on Wednesday, said that he was alleging that there was a conspiracy from the very beginning before the election to make sure the elections did not take place or that even if the voting did take place, that everything be reverted to what happened under Babangida.

In the words of Soyinka; “When we all just woke up and discovered that even though the results have been calculated, even though the results were in possession of international bodies, including monitoring embassies and so on, even if we had the results directly, it was suddenly annulled.

“It was no longer a contest between individuals. It was now a contest between the so-called interim political party and democracy. When you have a binary like that, I have no doubt or hesitation about what side of the barricade my position should be,” he said.

Comment of the statement by the vice-presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 election, Datti Baba-Ahmed, that called on the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN) not to swear-in President Tinubu, Soyinka pointedly said that Datti Baba-Ahmed’s interview was “disgraceful and menacing.”