The Labour Party’s Presidential Campaign Council has said its vice-presidential candidate for the February 25 presidential election, Datti Baba-Ahmed, would not engage Professor Wole Soyinka in any debate.
Soyinka, Africa’s first Nobel Prize winner in literature, had challenged Datti for a one-on-one interview on national television.
Soyinka offered himself for a debate in a statement titled: “Fascism on Course,” while reacting to a cyber-attack from OBidients, describing them as one of the most repulsive and off-putting concoctions he has encountered in any political arena.
This came after Baba-Ahmed’s recent appearance on a live television programme, where he stressed that “whoever swears in Mr. Tinubu” has “ended Democracy” in Nigeria, a position which Soyinka described as dictating to the judiciary and inappropriate.
Responding to Soyinka’s challenge, the party PCC in a statement made available to THISDAY on Saturday, said it was, like many Nigerians, bewildered by the late-hour intervention of Soyinka on issues around the flawed 2023 elections.
According to the statement, “One of those who should ordinarily and rightfully be honoured as the conscience of the nation, Soyinka, is now criminalising dissent and in fact weighing in on the side of fraud and injustice!”
The party explained that it was culturally indecent given “their age and accomplishment gaps taken into account, for Datti to sit opposite the 88-year-old global icon and point out his folly to his face, even if the old man called for it.
“We state therefore that the vice-presidential candidate of Labour Party, Dr. Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed cannot take up Prof. Soyinka’s offer of a public debate, not out of cowardice, but for cultural and political reasons.
“And politically there is no basis for such a challenge in that Prof Soyinka is not on any of the opposite ballots.
“If, however, he can use his influence to drag his preferred candidates, who resisted debates throughout the campaign, to the studio this second, Datti says he is more than willing to take them on,” the Labour Party added.
Emameh Gabriel in Abuja
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