Nigeria’s Presidential System Wasteful —Soyinka

Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, has said that the presidential system of government Nigeria is currently practising is wasteful.

Prof. Soyinka stated this while speaking at a Town Hall Meeting organised by the Save Nigeria Group in Lagos, Southwest Nigeria, on Monday.

Soyinka said further: “we are coming to a time when we will ask ourselves whether this nation can afford the presidential system.”

He said Nigerians know where the country’s money has gone to and have resisted being punished.

He reminded the people that Greeks took to the streets when the government introduced its austerity measures and that such uprising may still continue in Nigeria except the leaders begin to think right.

He also decried the endemic corruption in the country.

According to him, like in some other countries, corruption should be seen as a public disgrace, but “here, however, the more corrupt you are, the more they give you chieftaincy titles”

He said he recently thought of a metaphor with which to describe the level of corruption in the country and “I thought of hydropus,” a combination of hydra and octopus.”

Describing it further, he said an octopus has a lot of tentacles with which it feeds itself while he decided to use hydra, because it has several heads and would not die even when one of the heads is cut off.

He described the country’s legislature as the “hydropus” of corruption with some of the lawmakers earning more than the American President.

He argued that the country cannot effectively fight corruption without changing the legislature.

While thanking Nigerians for coming out en-masse during the protest against the Federal Government’s policy on removal of fuel subsidy, the Nobel Laureate ended his speech by saying that Nigerians would still take over their streets from the soldiers that have been deployed to Lagos when the time comes.

—Eromosele Ebhomele & Jamiu Yisa