Soyinka and his Citizens Forum civil society group endorse Moghalu for president

NOBEL laureate Professor Wole Soyinka, has endorsed Young Progressive Party (YPP) presidential candidate Professor Kingsley Moghalu for this month's polls saying his manifesto offers hope for the future.

On February 16, Nigerians go to the polls to elect a new president and currently, there are about 70 candidates standing for office. Apart from the big two parties the All progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), there are numerous independents running for president, who have come up with innovative ideas about how to diversify the Nigerian economy.

Apart from Professor Moghalu, several other new and young candidates include Omoyele Sowore of the African Action Congress (AAC) and Fela Durotoye of the Alliance for New Nigeria (AAN). All of them have met with Professor Soyinka and yesterday, he revealed that after months of rigorous analyses of the profiles and manifestoes of the various candidates, he was opting for Professor Moghalu.

Professor Soyinka who runs a civil society group known as Citizens Forum, said: “The nation has been brought to her knees and internally, the blaring media testimony needs no augmentation. Beyond her borders, Nigeria is the tale of citizens designated pariahs of the global community for whom special dossiers are opened and units of security agencies are specifically assigned.

"Online transactions are programmed to reject basic usage once the word Nigeria is inserted in the data profile and there are few nation left, within or outside the continental borders where  no matter the codeword a Nigerian room has not been designated. Her humanity litters the sand trails of the Sahara, it lines the Mediterranean sea-bed with the bones of a desperate generation, seeking green pastures and lines from my poems have been appropriated and embossed as epitaphs on the tombstones of Nigerians washed up the isle of Catania and accorded dignified burials by total strangers, certainly paid more respect than Nigerians themselves consider due to their own humanity."

He added that other would-be migrants have been slaughtered by religious fundamentalists on the shores of Tripoli while waiting for their precarious crossing on suicidal boats. According to Professor Soyinka, other migrants end up as commodities in the slave markets of Libya and Mauritania.

Professor Soyinka added: “Over the past few months, we studied the careers, experiences and track records of most of the presidential aspirants and most intensely those actually short-listed by the opposition parties themselves. Like millions of Nigerians, we watched the debates and I physically interacted with some of the acknowledged top contenders, in some cases several times.

"We participated in Handshake Across the Niger where some candidates presented their briefs and among others, I delivered a keynote address. There was nothing complicated about assessment parameters including mental preparedness, analytical aptitude, response to the nation’s security challenges, economic grounding, grasp of socio-political actualities, including a remedial concern with the Nigerian image in foreign perception etc, not forgetting a convincing commitment to governance and resource decentralisation, commonly referred to as restructuring.

"The forum rejected retrograde propositions of a political merry-go-round, which urge the electorate to choose this or that candidate in order to ensure our turn at the next power incumbency. Overall, the exercise was exacting but also therapeutic as it proved yet again that there is over-abundant leadership quality locked up in the nation and that it is a collective shortcoming that the political space has not been sufficiently opened up to let soar such potential. Well, to cite the Chinese proverb: a journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step."