Igbos Votes Were Based on Their Stomach - Wole Soyinka

Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka has described the Igbos as
people who can be predicted when it comes to voting.
According to him, the Igbos vote based on their stomach
and have an incurable money mindedness. Prof. Soyinka
said this while delivering a lecture titled 'Predicting Nigeria,
Electoral Ironies’ at Harvard University Hutchins Centre for
African and African American Research", in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, USA.
"Igbos remained unrepentant and resolute towards
their strategic objective of secession at worst; or a
Nigerian president of Igbo extraction at best,” he
said at the lecture which held on April 29.
"The climax of MASSOB’s war against the Nigerian
state was the call for sit-ins and civil disobedience
that shut down markets and public services, as
Igbos stayed at home in a symbolic gesture to
assert Biafran independence. The call was
honoured by governors in the two principal Ibo
states, though without fanfare. The Igbos are
probably the only group of Nigerians that you can
predict with great accuracy whom they will vote for
in an election, because they tend to put their votes
where their stomachs take them; suffering as it
were, from incurable money-mindedness, as they
would stop at nothing in their quest for personal
financial gain. Muhammadu Buhari was the better
of the two evils as the incumbent president
Goodluck Jonathan had been an unmitigated
disaster and failure. It was a painful decision to tell
people to vote Buhari, but the country needed a new
beginning. I was more against Jonathan, than I was
pro-Buhari. “Nothing is more unworthy of
leadership than to degrade a system by which one
attains fulfillment, and this is what the nation
witnessed time and time again under Jonathan,
who was increasingly becoming intolerant of
opposition in an escalating streak of impunity and
authoritarian madness, which was most blatant and
unconscionable. The ‘militricians’ – soldiers turned
politicians in power – aren’t looking for excellence;
their civilian cohorts are worse. Short cuts and how
to circumvent the system for the profit of a few are
the norm of governance. Those who do honest work
are derided as lacking the skill to fit it. Ironically,
things haven’t quite changed a bit after 16 years of
democracy in the country.” he said