Buhari is the one who is ready to make amends for his past mistakes - Wole Soyinka

The Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka in his  interview with Zero Tolerance, a periodic publication by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Buhari is the one who is ready to make amends for his past mistakes.


The 1986 Nobel prize winner noted that the new president has already paid some debts to the Nigerian society. He further described the president as a lucky man.
He noted that although Buhari has not come out openly to apologise for his wrong deeds in the past, he has nonetheless accepted the fact that he had made some mistakes.

He (Buhari) has not pleaded for forgiveness for his past, if he had done that, I might have been less ambiguous about him. But I think from my findings about him, he is a born again phenomenon. If I am wrong, well, too bad. Though I don’t believe in ‘born-againism’ but I think this may be an exception,” Soyinka said.

Meanwhile, the laureate also came down heavily on the former president Goodluck Jonathan for trying to differentiate between stealing and corruption, saying Nigerians should have challenged him on that.
Soyinka, who is fondly called Kongi, also noted that it was wrong for Jonathan to have taken such a position on the serious issue like corruption, thereby playing down its negative impact on the nation and its people.

He said: “The media should have challenged President Jonathan to define what stealing is, when he said that stealing is not corruption. How can a public figure, an intelligent person like that, come out to tell the public that corruption is not stealing? Then you should have asked him, what then is corruption? The media should have challenged him.”