Soyinka Lashes out at Goodluck Support Network for Attaching False Statement to Him
Nigerian nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, has berated the Goodluck Support Network, for fabricating and crediting a false statement to him.
The group, which is one of several groups campaigning for the re-election of President Goodluck Jonathan, used a controversial statement said to have been written by Soyinka and titled: ‘The North must stop bombing Nigeria and blaming Jonathan’. It claimed that Professor Soyinka said the inability of the federal government to battle the Boko Haram sect successfully was the fault of the people of northern Nigeria as they refused to co-operate with the government.
The Professor, however, reacted to the statement calling it “an unscrupulous, disgusting and cowardly fabrication. The Goodluck Support Network must be truly desperate to resort to such despicable tactics.”
In his online statement addressing the issue, he said: “I formally denounce this malevolent falsehood. I must go further, however, and challenge the Nigerian press to rise to the fullness of their responsibility to the public. The time is long overdue for proactive steps to terminate the corruption of the profession by unprincipled interlopers.
“This particular publication surely sets a record for sheer brazenness and undermines the credibility of media communication with the public it professes to serve. The tendency is dangerous to one and all, including the press itself, where any neophyte can easily master the skill of cloning utter falsehood into media pages under the authentic masthead of online press.
“It is not sufficient to shrug one’s shoulders in resignation, observing that errand boys can only be expected to adopt the methods of their paymasters. There is desperate need for sanitation in the information arena before our entire public space is overwhelmed by nauseous concoctions, unscrupulous and unprincipled, throwing the public into confusion until it is no longer possible for many to disentangle fact from fiction.”