Nigeria’s Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka has described the protests embarked upon by some Ile Ife indigenes over the announcement of a non-native as the next Vice Chancellor of Obafemi Awolowo University as “crazy”.
Soyinka, who spoke at a lecture titled, ‘The Politics of Black Intellection and Creativity, at the University of Pennsylvania, the United States’, which was the first of the newly-inaugurated Distinguished Lecture series in African Studies.
Reacting to a question by Professor Wale Adebanwi, Presidential Penn Compact Professor of Africana Studies, Department of Africana Studies, University of Pennsylvania, Soyinka said he’s “shocked” over the incessant kidnappings, ritual killings and violence that have become the order of the day in Nigeria.
Soyinka, a former lecturer from OAU, was asked to express his reaction to the agitations that the next Vice-Chancellor of the Obafemi Awolowo University must be an indigene of its host city, he faulted the protesters.
“An Ife person wrote me and say, look at these people disgracing us. I told him to go there and disgrace them. You are an Ife person. You should be in the front line.
“The Ife people should say those people don’t belong to us, we don’t know where they came from. And they should be dealt with ruthlessly. Why should there be an Ife VC anywhere? I just don’t understand what they put in the water these days. It is crazy,” he said.
Since the announcement of Prof Adebayo Bamire as the 12th substantive VC of OAU, some Ife indigenes commenced protest.
The protesters argued that an Ife indigene should have been appointed.
Credit: Punch
