Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has stressed his opinion that Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has better expertise in wine matters than in political analysis.
Wole Soyinka, Olusegun Obasanjo
Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has again reiterated that his view expressed in his three-volume autobiography, 'My Watch, 'that Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has better expertise in wine matters than in political analysis is true.
In the book, Obasanjo wrote, “For Wole, no one can be good, nor can anything be spot-on politically except that which emanates from him or is ordained by him. His friends and loved ones will always be right and correct, no matter what they do or fail to do. He is surely a better wine connoisseur and a more successful aparo (guinea fowl) hunter than a political critic.”
According to Punch, in an interview granted a private television station, Channels TV, on a programme tagged, ‘Book Club’, Obasanjo, while holding on to his words, said what he wrote about Soyinka was purely his view, adding that Soyinka did not have to agree with him.
Obasanjo, however, said he had told Soyinka that, in that case, whichever of them gets to heaven first should wait at the gate to welcome the other.
He said, “Wole Soyinka is a gifted man. I have always acknowledged that but he is a bad politician and I have also always said that. That is my own point of view. He may agree with it, he may not agree with it.
“But having said that, I also, in my book, bring out Wole Soyinka as I see him and that’s my own judgment; that’s my own perspective of him. He may agree, he may not agree but anybody can bring out his own perspective of me.
“For instance, I know that if I want somebody to give me the best wine, one of the people I will go to is Wole Soyinka and I know he has a taste for good wine and I said that in the book.”