In 2004, as Colin Powell rounded up his tour of duty as Secretary of State – and with the war in Iraq still raging but at that stage, it was clear Saddam Hussein did not possess the weapons of mass destruction, the very pretext on which the war was launched and haven fell out with President Bush and was certainly not returning as Secretary of State even if Bush won re-election – Powell, the New York Times reported, had a series of conversations with friends and aides and one thing continually disturbed him. It was said that Powell recognized quite clearly that his obituary was going to begin with, “Colin Powell sold Americans on going to war in Iraq based on intelligence that turned out to be bogus.” Powell was, of course, referring to his Speech, in February 2003, at the United Nations for which he outlined the United States’ case for the invasion of Iraq. Powell not only realized that it was a “blot” on his record, but he was also prescient enough to know, as Michael Barbaro surmises, that “the totality of an otherwise distinguished and even singular military and political career would forever be tainted and would, in a way, be sublimated to what had happened in Iraq.”
How prophetic Powell turned out to be. The first sentence of his obituary published by the New York Times reads, “Colin L. Powell, who in four decades of public life served as the nation’s top soldier, diplomat, and national security advisor, and whose speech at the United Nations in 2003 helped pave the way for the United States to go to war in Iraq, died on Monday. He was 84.” Virtually all the obituaries written about him began with similar lines.
Of course, Powell felt there was more to say about him than that single ‘blot’ in his impressive resume, but history is often brutal.
Wole Soyinka has found himself in the same agonizing position and he is not dealing with it with dignity. Last week, at a media parley, he tried to deny his almost thinly disguised support for Buhari’s election in 2015. “I challenge anyone to say where did I say vote for Buhari – when what occasion and in what language,” Mr. Soyinka protested vigorously. What I said very distinctly is ‘do not vote for Jonathan.’
Mr. Soyinka’s anguish is understandable. The Nobel laureate, professor/teacher, playwright, public intellectual, activist, and self-described hunter and wine connoisseur has led a rich, fulfilling, and exhilarating life. From fighting for students’ rights, producing brilliant plays that won him the Nobel prize in literature to sacrificing everything in the fight against brutal military dictators, Mr. Soyinka has seen it all. What is more, he has done all done standing on the right side of history.
Then, at his old age, when he should be retired, resting on his farm, hunting and sampling choice wines for fun, he allowed himself to make, perhaps, his only public but devastating gaffe of his rich life.
Mr. Soyinka’s gaffe is no ordinary gaffe. He literally ate his vomit and sided with the reactionary/retrogressive dictators he spent the greater part of his life fighting against. History has been quite clear before then that Buhari’s military junta was one of the worst things to happen to Nigeria not only in terms of its sheer brutality but in its undisguised display of provinciality and economic illiteracy. So incensed was Soyinka by Buhari’s effrontery to contest for presidency in 2007 that he penned perhaps, the best takedown of Buhari’s military junta – “The Crimes of Buhari”, in which he details the atrocities and sheer stupidity of Buhari’s military junta of 198/85, concluding then that “to invite back into power a man who did so much to destroy a people’s self-esteem, dignity, and faith in law and justice, is a sign of self-abasement, lack of self-esteem, a slave mentality that dooms, not only the present, but succeeding generations”. He wondered in astonishment how “former slavers, now free of their chains, should clamour to be ruled by one who not only turned their nation into a slave plantation, but forbade them any discussion of their condition?”
Yet, in 2015, when his co-ethnics, ideological comrades, and friends decided to turn to Buhari for redemption and employed all the public relations tricks in the books to rewrite history and burnish his image, Soyinka not only kept mute but actively joined them in attacking and destroying Buhari’s opponent in the election. So triumphal was Soyinka with Buhari’s win that he declared Buhari a “born-again phenomenon some months after.” Of course, Soyinka did not expressly ask Nigerians to vote for Buhari. Neither did all the so-called presidential aspirants recruited to tantalise and distract southern youth in 2019. One thing was clear though: they were all working for the success of Mr. Buhari at the polls.
Mr. Soyinka may be having a real crisis of conscience. He may be unsure about how history will judge him. But he is going about it the same way Nigerian leaders go about things – by refusing to accept responsibility. We do not care who he supported or voted for in 2015. His support or lack of support for a particular candidate would not have produced a different outcome – and we all know this. Besides, it is his constitutional right to support whosoever he wishes. What is distasteful is the attempt to re-write history, to somehow deny or minimize his support for Buhari in 2015 now that the consequences of a Buhari presidency are being keenly felt.
One key characteristic of public life in Nigeria is that practically no one accepts responsibility for anything that goes wrong. Mr. Soyinka must not descend to this low realm. I sympathise with him though. It is difficult to do all things right throughout one’s life only to see that all the good you have done is overshadowed by just one inconsequential decision. Mr. Soyinka must learn to take responsibility for his choice in 2015. Perhaps, it is the case as Harvey Dent said that “you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
