Wole Soyinka clarifies Peter Obi's visit was for apology, not reconciliation

Renowned professor, Wole Soyinka, has responded to reports that the recent visit by Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi, was for reconciliation. In a statement titled "A visitation and the Allure of ‘Reconciliation'," Soyinka clarified that the word "reconciliation" was inappropriate and a diversionary invocation. According to him, there are no issues to reconcile between Peter Obi, the Labour Party, and himself.

During the meeting, which was attended by two other individuals only, there was no mention of reconciliation. However, there were expressions of "burden of leadership," "responsibility," "apology," "pleading," "formal dissociation from the untenable," and discussions on the "tragic ascendancy of ethnic cleavage" under ironic, untenable circumstances. The discussions were frank and creative, but the notion of reconciliation was never raised.

Soyinka also expressed his inability to relate to something known as the "Obidient" or "Obidient Family." He believes that any notion of reconciliation or even relations with such a spectral emanation is simply grasping at empty air.

The professor went on to talk about the dark, putrid recesses in the national psyche that were exposed during the weekend of orgiastic rave in the social media. He described it as inviting "gruesome variations on images from Dante's Purgatorio" and "a fathomless pit." Soyinka believes that attempting to navigate one's way along a mat spread across the infernal abyss is an invitation to moral suicide. He called attention to his essays on the theme of reconciliation based on truth and the ethical imperative of restitution.

Soyinka concluded by stating that if he now complies with entreaties from several valued, genuinely concerned directions and ignores new provocations, it is only because he approves of Mohammed Ali's strategy of Rope-a-Dope, where blind menace is left flailing hopelessly at the disdainful manifest of truth. His essays on reconciliation will be further elaborated in Democracy Primer III - Bookcraft's Intervention series, which will be published on June 12, the watershed extorted from the current regime as the nation's Democracy Day.