Nobel laureate, Prof.
Wole Soyinka, on Saturday, came hard on those asking him to tear his US
Green Card as he vowed to do once billionaire businessman, Donald Trump,
won the US presidential election.
Online
commentators have been daring the revered playwright to carry out his
threat which he reportedly made few days before the election since Trump
had won.
But Soyinka, in a statement he signed titled, “Red
card, green card– Notes towards the management of hysteria”, described
the online commentators as “noisome creatures” whose ignorance resonates
largely on whatever they comment on.
He said, “Let me end with a
Red Card to those noisome creatures, the nattering nit-wits of
Internet: maybe Trumpland is not as despicable as the Naijaland you
impose on our reality from your secure cesspits of anonymity.
“Go
back to school. Your problem is ignorance, ignorance of whatever
subject you so readily comment upon. Learn to study your subject before
opening up on issues beyond your grasp.
“Sometimes you make one
feel like swapping one green for another, out of embarrassment for
occupying the same national space as you.’’
Soyinka maintained that he would carry out his threat but not at a time fixed by his critics.
He
said, ‘‘If it even becomes convenient to bring it forward, I intend to
do so, but please don’t come at me with plaints of time imprecision.
“I never discussed it with you, nor invited you to a private decision whose execution was already in the making.
“Do
not try to browbeat me. It’s a waste of time – all you have to do is
immerse yourselves in my antecedents. It will not attempt to deal with
the notion of an exit time-table as conceived by others.’’
The
scholar-critic, who also narrated why he decided in the past to issue a
‘Red Card’ to countries such as Australia, China, South Africa and Cuba,
added that the decision on his US green card made while addressing a
group of students at Oxford University was not a public lecture.
from Punch