Nigerian author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, has expressed her disagreement with Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka over his account of a comment made by the vice-presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Datti Baba-Ahmed ove the outcome of the February 25 presidential election.
Wole Soyinka earlier reacted in his interview with Arise TV to the comment made by Datti Baba-Ahmed over the presidential election.
He considered what Datti said as fascistic and unacceptable.
Datti had insisted on Channels TV that declaring Bola Tinubu the President-elect and issuing him a certificate of return was against the constitution.
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Speaking in an interview with Arise TV, Chimamanda stated that she has a lot of respect for Professor Soyinka, whom she described as a thinker and a writer that everyone should read.
However, she strongly disagreed with his characterization of Datti’s comment as “fascistic.”
In her words, “I have a lot of respect for Prof. Soyinka, I admire him, I respect him as a thinker, as a writer, I think everyone should read The Man Died, Ake: The Memoir is beautiful, but at the same time, I disagree with him very strongly on this particular issue, and actually because I respect Prof. Soyinka so much, I went back and watch the interview, and I think fascist is a really strong word.”
Chimamanda further opined that Baba-Ahmed was making a strongly felt point about the election, and she believes that a charitable way of reading Soyinka’s comments is that the Nobel Laureate is not given restraint in language, in general.
The disagreement between Adichie and Soyinka has sparked a debate on social media, with many people expressing their views on the matter.
