APC, leading to claims that the opposition wasn’t substantially different from its rivals.
“Neither party is filled with angels, there are corrupt figures on both sides,” Soyinka said, claiming this election to have been the most money-fueled in the country’s history. “Some of them I don’t even want to see anywhere near this building. Others, on the other hand, have sat here, these very chairs, eaten and drunk with me.”
The PDP’s 16-year reign, which will end on May 29, has been plagued with corruption scandals in a nation that ranked 136 of 175 countries in Transparency International’s 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index, on par with Russia and Iran.
Festering Disease
Its latest administration also lost popularity due to its inability to tackle the Boko Haram Islamist insurgency in the north of the country. Nigeria delayed elections in February as the military announced a six-week offensive that month. With the support of neighboring countries, it recovered territory lost to Boko Haram.
“Nigerians have a right to be resentful of the fact that that kind of measure was not taken early enough,” Soyinka said. “That this disease was allowed to fester leading to the traumatization of swathes of Nigerian landscape and society and humanity.”
Jonathan, who conceded on Tuesday evening, an unprecedented step in a country accustomed to post-election violence and turmoil, could have attempted to cling to power, said Soyinka. The fact he didn’t makes amends for some of his lapses in government, he said.
“He could have easily tried to do a Gbagbo,” said Soyinka, referring to Laurent Gbagbo, who sparked post-election violence in Ivory Coast when he refused to step down after an election defeat in 2010.
‘Gingers Me Up’
With Buhari’s win, Soyinka, who hasn’t felt this optimistic since the end of military rule in 1999, hopes he won’t be disappointed again.
“Against my rational instincts, I believe that we have here a genuine case of a born-again democrat,” he said. Ultimately, “the real heroes of this exercise have been the Nigerian people and that gingers me up.”
There’s a moment when we must put the past aside, most especially when what presumes to the present becomes untolerable and continues and threatens to prolong itself, then we have to be more pragmatic.” Reports Yinka Ibukun for BloombergTV
