{"id":38355,"date":"2015-05-06T06:28:03","date_gmt":"2015-05-06T05:28:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pointblanknews.com\/pbn\/?p=38355"},"modified":"2015-05-06T06:28:03","modified_gmt":"2015-05-06T05:28:03","slug":"igbos-votes-based-on-their-stomach-says-soyinka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pointblanknews.com\/pbn\/exclusive\/igbos-votes-based-on-their-stomach-says-soyinka\/","title":{"rendered":"Igbos votes based on their stomach, says Soyinka"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"mailview-right\" class=\"offset uibox\">\n<div id=\"messagecontent\">\n<div class=\"leftcol\">\n<div id=\"messagebody\">\n<div class=\"message-htmlpart\">\n<div class=\"rcmBody\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Nobel Laureate and foremost social critic, Wole Soyinka, is of the opinion that Nigerians of Igbo extraction are the only people in the country who can be predicted accurately.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Delivering a lecture titled \u2018Predicting Nigeria, Electoral Ironies\u2019 at the Harvard University Hutchins Centre for African &amp; African American Research, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, the revered scholar described people from that part of the country as \u201cgreedy\u201d.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cIgbos remained unrepentant and resolute towards their strategic objective of secession at worst; or a Nigerian president of Igbo extraction at best,\u201d he said at the lecture, which held on April 29.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cThe climax of MASSOB\u2019s war against the Nigerian state was the call for sit-ins and civil disobedience that shut down markets and public services, as Igbos stayed at home in a symbolic gesture to assert Biafran independence.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The call was honoured by governors in the two principal Ibo states, though without fanfare. \u201c<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The Igbos are probably the only group of Nigerians that you can predict with great accuracy whom they will vote for in an election, because they tend to put their votes where their stomachs take them; suffering as it were, from incurable money-mindedness, as they would stop at nothing in their quest for personal financial gain<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">.\u201d Commenting on the result of Nigeria\u2019s presidential election, Soyinka said the re-election of President Goodluck Jonathan would have been \u201cdisastrous\u201d, as Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria\u2019s president-elect, is better option.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cMuhammadu Buhari was the better of the two evils as the incumbent president Goodluck Jonathan had been an unmitigated disaster and failure,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">\u201cIt was a painful decision to tell people to vote Buhari, but the country needed a new beginning. I was more against Jonathan, than I was pro-Buhari. \u201cNothing is more unworthy of leadership than to degrade a system by which one attains fulfillment, and this is what the nation witnessed time and time again under Jonathan, who was increasingly becoming intolerant of opposition in an escalating streak of impunity and authoritarian madness, which was most blatant and unconscionable. \u201cThe \u2018militricians\u2019 \u2013 soldiers turned politicians in power \u2013 aren\u2019t looking for excellence; their civilian cohorts are worse. Short cuts and how to circumvent the system for the profit of a few are the norm of governance. Those who do honest work are derided as lacking the skill to fit it. Ironically, things haven\u2019t quite changed a bit after 16 years of democracy in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Cable.ng&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"message\" class=\"statusbar\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Related Posts generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nobel Laureate and foremost social critic, Wole Soyinka, is of the opinion that Nigerians of Igbo extraction are the only people in the country who can be predicted accurately. Delivering&hellip;<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Related Posts generic via filter on wp_trim_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38356,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exclusive"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Igbos votes based on their stomach, says Soyinka - Pointblank News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pointblanknews.com\/pbn\/exclusive\/igbos-votes-based-on-their-stomach-says-soyinka\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Igbos votes based on their stomach, says Soyinka - Pointblank News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Nobel Laureate and foremost social critic, Wole Soyinka, is of the opinion that Nigerians of Igbo extraction are the only people in the country who can be predicted accurately. 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