April 05, (THEWILL) – Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, has announced a reward of $1,000 for any person that can expose the author of fake news attributed to him in the last six months.
Soyinka announced the reward during an interview with Arise TV News morning show on Wednesday.
While lamenting a lot of false information linked to him as peddled by media platforms, Soyinka cautioned Nigerians against unfounded information published as fake news.
“I also want to use this opportunity, if you don’t mind, to warn your audience: Please beware of fake news. A lot of damage is being done by the propagation of fake news.
“Even, as recently as a few days ago. Some verbiage, some garbage, some nauseating news, which you’ve seen many times before have resurrected and attributed to Wole Soyinka. It makes me sick. I do not see why that could not be solved.
“In fact, I think it has reached a stage I’m going to go further. I want to use this opportunity now to announce a reward. I’m not a rich man, but I’m going to announce a reward.
“I look at my account and can afford a thousand dollars to anyone who can finger successfully the author of some of the tracts that are attributed to me over the past six months.
“We have repudiated again and again. Other people (would) come out to say Wole Soyinka never said this. There are some who want to believe it and there are those who have some tractions.
“So, permit me to use you as my advertising board to place a thousand dollars on those (peddling fake news about me).
“I will even go further to raise additional funds for anyone who can please relieve us of false attribution of fake news.”
On the 2023 elections, Soyinka said he declined support for the presidential candidates of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Atiku Abubakar and Bola Ahmed Tinubu respectively, when they came to meet him.
According to the noble laureate, he asked them to leave the stage for fresh energies to assume the helm of affairs in Nigeria.
“I told Atiku when he was contesting and came to see me in my Ikeja office few years ago; he came with Gbenga Daniel, my former governor (Ogun state).“I said to him, ‘Listen, it’s about time you people left the stage, why don’t you just go away. We need an infusion of fresh blood into the system’.
“But, for some people, maybe they read it as bloodletting. No I said infusion of fresh blood. I said so I can not support you. I think your generation should quit.
“But, he wasn’t the only one. I then sought out the current President-elect, Tinubu, and I gave him exactly the same message.
“I said, ‘Whatever you people are planning, I’m convinced that we need the young generation, new thinking, new sensibilities, new energies’.
“So, why don’t you just leave the stage, let’s look for somebody, a really brilliant individual then use your entire influence to catapult that person to power, and this country will see a massive transformation.
“We spoke for about an hour and a half, and then Bola Tinubu said, ‘No’. He said there were still things he felt he could still contribute.”
Soyinka also said he cautioned Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP), on the excesses of the his followers.
Soyinka maintained that his rejection of fascism wasn’t new and that on three occasions, he was able to send a message to Obi, that, if he lost the election, it would be his followers who lost it for him.
“My rejection of fascism is nothing new. On three occasions, I was able to send a message to Peter Obi that if he lost the election, it would be his followers who lost it for him. It was depressing to watch his lieutenant, a crucially positioned voice of a movement that has ‘broken the mould’, threaten the totality of social existence”, he said.
