Igbos vote based on their stomach, they suffer from incurable money mindedness- Wole Soyinka

Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka has described the

Igbos as people who can be predicted when it

comes to voting. According to him, the Igbos

vote based on their stomach and have an

incurable money mindedness. Prof. Soyinka said

this while delivering a lecture titled 'Predicting

Nigeria, Electoral Ironies’ at Harvard University

Hutchins Centre for African and African American

Research", in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

"Igbos remained unrepentant and resolute

towards their strategic objective of

secession at worst; or a Nigerian

president of Igbo extraction at best,” he

said at the lecture which held on April 29.

"The climax of MASSOB’s 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. The call was

honoured by governors in the two

principal Ibo states, though without

fanfare. 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. Muhammadu Buhari was

the better of the two evils as the

incumbent president Goodluck Jonathan

had been an unmitigated disaster and

failure. It 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.

“Nothing 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. The

‘militricians’ – soldiers turned politicians

in power – aren’t 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’t quite changed a

bit after 16 years of democracy in the

country.” he said