The playwright said history almost repeated itself during the election period because according to him, some people planned to cancel the election like General Ibrahim Babangida did in 1993.

Soyinka while speaking on Channels Television on Wednesday, January 17, 2024, said in the first place, there was a conspiracy to make sure the election did not hold.

He said, “I am 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.

“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.”

He added, “It was no longer a contest between individuals, it was now a contest between the so-called interim political party and democracy.”

On the post-election comment by Datti Baba-Ahmed, the vice-presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Soyinka slammed the politician describing the comment as “disgraceful and menacing.”

Baba-Ahmed had asked the Chief Justice of Nigeria, Justice Kayode Ariwoola, not to swear in Bola Tinubu, the winner of the presidential election as duly elected president of the country.

“At that interview by Datti, that disgraceful and menacing interview, was for me the ultimate signal because this was somebody calling for the rubbishing of a structure he profited to ever become a governor,” the playwright said.