Wole Soyinka apologizes for criticizing President over Gambia election

monjola sotubo

December 6, 2016 3:15 PM

Buhari praised Jammeh, who has ruled for 22 years, for conceding defeat to election winner, Adama Barrow.

President Muhammadu Buhari meets with Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka at the Presidential Villa on August 11, 2016

Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka has apologized to President Muhammadu Buhari after criticizing him for praising Gambian President, Yahya Jammeh.

Buhari praised Jammeh, who has ruled for 22 years, for conceding defeat to election winner, Adama Barrow.

Soyinka criticized Buhariafter apparently assuming that the Nigerian president was congratulating Jammeh for winning the elections.

“Please help me beg President Buhari, I don’t say he shouldn’t congratulate Trump because there is no way one can avoid Trump but you can avoid petty little dictators like Jammeh of Gambia who is the opposite of everything one would expect of the true African leader for his or he citizens. Please President Buhari, restrict yourself to those you absolutely have to congratulate,” the Nobel laureate said.

In his apology to Buhari, Soyinka explained that he had reacted based on a miscommunication.

“Just before setting off for my media chat at Freedom Park, I was handed a Sunday newspaper with a comment on the recently concluded Gambian Presidential elections. I totally misheard the comment and thought that ex-President Jammeh had again succeeded in manipulating the votes to remain on the continent’s ‘sit-tight’ roll of dishonour,” he said.

“It turned out that I had obtained the wrong picture. The torturer and notorious administrator of hallucinogenic broths to citizens had been dethroned. I therefore take back my criticism of Nigeria’s message of congratulations.

“Let the entire West African sub-region and indeed the entire continent rejoice in the overthrow of the monatrocity who had sworn to rule for a billion years, a throw-back autocrat with delusions of eternal power who casually tossed opposition in dungeons and threw the keys away.

“Once again, my apologies for the miscommunication. I rejoice with the long-suffering citizens of Gambia, encourage the rehabilitation of that land strip, and recovery of its existence in full liberty, freed of fear, and restored to dignity as part of the sentient species," he added.

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Soyinka also said that Jammeh must be prosecuted “for his twenty-two years of boastful misrule and crimes against humanity.”

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