Wife of the President, Mrs. Patience Jonathan has described Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka as an embarrassment to Nigeria , stressing that the professor has betrayed the moral duty bestowed on him as respected member of the society.
Soyinka has attributed crisis in the Rivers State House of Assembly to the first lady, calling on the President to call her to order. But in a statement issued by Spokesperson to the office of the First Lady, Mr. Ayo Osinlu, she called on the professor of literature to carefully consider all shades of issues before going public with his opinion.
“Unfortunately, Soyinka betrayed moral duty in his recent diatribe against Mrs. Patience Jonathan. Of course, this would not be the first time he would reach out against the First Lady, usually from self-righteously indignant lecterns. In this particular instance, his verdict was that Mrs. Jonathan was ‘stoking the crisis currently rocking her home state of Rivers…’, and thereupon asked Mr. President to caution his wife. The good, old Prof. reminds one of the truth that indeed, most of the giants on the street are men of like passions like everyone else. Worse still, most of them are actually standing on clay feet and would fail the test of a gentle push.
“Otherwise, who would have believed that the social, civil, constitutional and sundry rights crusader Prof. would maintain a safe distance from the heart of an activity that is a potential threat to the peace, security and safety of the people of a state, then collect exaggerated stories and jaundiced perspectives from familiar propagandists and character assassins, and promptly summon the media to a ‘state of the nation’ address”, the First Lady said.
He described the professor as an embarrassment to his throng of admirers and followers.“That a sage of Prof. Soyinka’s status, who used to be a gauge of public morality in this nation, would lend himself to propaganda of high drive, to save a governor who elected to launch into a river without applicable survival skills,” the statement said.
She said the plan of the professor was to attack the President and pull to pieces anyone associated with him, as a strategy for attracting public sympathy to the ‘clear underdog’, adding that Soyinka was only contributing to the project when he claimed that she was Governor Rotimi Amaechi’s problem.
