Renowned novelist, Chimamanda Adichie, harshly criticised one of her senior colleagues, Professor Wole Soyinka, over his views about the recent past Labour Party, LP Vice Presidential Candidate, Datti Baba-Ahmed, for making a politically inciteful statement.
The Nobel Laureate Prize Winner previously spoke of Datti’s unguided comment and upon that premise, called the LP’s Vice a fascist.
She disagreed with the Prof despite his strongly-held point on the matter, stating there’s no need to have referred to Yusuf Datti as a fascist.
Chimamanda Adichie stressed that the only charitable way to look at Soyinka’s critique of Datti’s statement is that he is not given restraint in language, in general.
She suggested that the Prof Wole Soyinka should have used the word fascist on the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC as many Nigerians feel deeply cheated and disenfranchised by the commission.
Chimamanda hinted that there is authoritarianism, the basis of fascism, at the centre of manipulating an election, forcefully taking the rights of people to vote, all the violence and how people remain silenced, are the true ways to refer to fascists, not Datti who merely suggested anything otherwise.
