Award-winning author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has fired back at Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka for describing Labour Party’s vice-presidential candidate, Datti Baba-Ahmed’s comment on the general elections as fascist. Chimamanda, who is an admirer of Soyinka and his work said she has a lot of respect for Soyinka, but strongly disagrees with his take on Baba-Ahmed’s comment.
She was a guest on AriseTv program last night , said the word fascist in describing the comments of Datti-Ahmed was a bit too extreme and that it doesn’t describe the statement of the vice presidential candidate of the LP.
“I have a lot of respect for Prof. Soyinka, I admire him, I respect him as a thinker, as a writer, I think every one should read the The Man Died, Ake: The Memoir is beautiful, but at the same time, I disagree with him very strongly on this particular issue, and actually because I respect Prof. Soyinka so much, I went back and
watch the interview, and I think fascist is a really strong word”
“We use it now to address this sort of authoritarianism that is often populist, and right-wing like Hungary, and even the former American president, and if you look at those situations, you can see why they have been termed fascist, and I didn’t see any reason Mr. Datti Baba-Ahmed’s interview would have been termed fascist”
“I think he was making a very strongly felt point about the election. I think a charitable way of reading Prof. Soyinka’s comments is that Professor Soyinka himself, I think it’s fair to say he is not given to restraint in language, in general, so maybe that’s where that word fascist came from.”
