Prof. Soyinka (left) and former US President Donald Trump (inset)
Nigeria’s Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has described the former President of the United States of America Mr Donald Trump a “racist”, “xenophobe” and “monster”.
But now that the ‘monster’ is out, Soyinka said: “I feel honoured to be associated with the democratic forces of the United States for correcting the unbelievable error that they committed four years ago.”
Soyinka who was on Arise Television recently said that he has forgiven Americans for electing Trump. The elder statesman who famously tore his green card to shreds after the emergence of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States in 2016, says that he has forgiven Americans for voting Trump out.
Speaking on why he tore his green card to shreds four years ago, Soyinka says: “I consider myself back in that community from which I dissociated myself four years ago and I am very glad to be back, but I am not renewing my green card, it is not necessary. I go in and out as a visiting alien and that is good enough for me.”
According to him, he was very much concerned with the US elections in 2016 due to the huge population of Nigerians in the country saying that America’s history would not be complete without blacks.
He said: “The complacency was very painful, and I said if you people are so careless as to let this racist, this monster, this xenophobic aberrant, this disrespect of the female gender, this serial bankrupt, this man who called your own society a shithole country, if you are so careless as to let him become the next president, I am moving out.” Soyinka stated that he was a bit happy when some supporters of Trump invaded the Capitol saying that Americans had come to take democracy for granted.
He continued: “So, you can imagine what I have felt over the last few weeks, the siege on the Capitol. In a way it was rather heart-warming for the Americans themselves to feel that what they have been fighting for is not really a given in their society and they had to confront it in a brutal, unbelievable way and they came out of it in flying colours.
“It is not over, not by any means, I don’t say that for a single moment, but it has been a lesson for us in this continent and we should be grateful that it did happen. I am sorry of course about the loss of life, I regret the disruption of normal life but now we are placed on the same playing level, that we are all fighting for the same virtue in human conduct, the same system we all believe in that you cannot take it for granted, not anymore and for us here in Nigeria, it has been, I hope, it has been a heart-warming occasion.”
