Wole Soyinka has threatened to leave Nigeria following a barrage of criticisms faced in the media for threatening to shred his US Green Card.
Wole Soyinka
Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka has threatened to exit Nigeria as a response to the media harassment to which Nigerians have subjected him.
Speaking to reporters yesterday at a media event held at Freedom Park on Lagos Island, Mr. Soyinka, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize for literature, said he was embarrassed to share a country with some "imbeciles and morons."
He said, "I should not be exiting the United States but Nigeria because the people on behalf of whom one has struggled all one’s life can be so slavish in mentality as to start querying the right of their champion to free speech."
He continued, "I am embarrassed to occupy the same space as some imbeciles and morons," adding that the exit from Nigeria can be "internal" or "external".
Mr. Soyinka, a retired professor from Obafemi Awolowo University and numerous universities in the U.K. and US, also threatened to move the residency of his foundation, the Wole Soyinka Foundation, out of Nigeria and dared anybody to criticize his decision.
"If the board agrees," he said, "I will move the residency of my foundation out of the country," he said.
He added that on the inauguration of the US president-elect, Donald Trump, he would hold a private funeral wake to mourn the death of common sense in Nigeria.
The Nobel laureate expressed irritation at many Nigerians who had taken to the social media to criticize his comment to leave the United States of America and tear his green card after Mr. Trump was declared winner in the November 8, 2016 presidential election in the US.