Igbos Vote Based On Their Stomach, They Suffer From Incurable Money Mindedness --Wole Soyinka

Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka has described the Igbos as people who can
be predicted when it comes to voting. According to him, the Igbos vote
based on their stomach and have an incurable money mindedness. Prof.
Soyinka said this while delivering a lecture titled 'Predicting
Nigeria, Electoral Ironies' at Harvard University Hutchins Centre for
African and African American Research", in Cambridge, Massachusetts,
USA.

"Igbos remained unrepentant and resolute towards their strategic
objective of secession at worst; or a Nigerian president of Igbo
extraction at best," he said at the lecture which held on April 29.

"The climax of MASSOB's war against the Nigerian state was the call
for sit-ins and civil disobedience that shut down markets and public
services, as Igbos stayed at home in a symbolic gesture to assert
Biafran independence. The call was honoured by governors in the two
principal Ibo states, though without fanfare. The Igbos are probably
the only group of Nigerians that you can predict with great accuracy
whom they will vote for in an election, because they tend to put their
votes where their stomachs take them; suffering as it were, from
incurable money-mindedness, as they would stop at nothing in their
quest for personal financial gain. Muhammadu Buhari was the better of
the two evils as the incumbent president Goodluck Jonathan had been an
unmitigated disaster and failure. It was a painful decision to tell
people to vote Buhari, but the country needed a new beginning. I was
more against Jonathan, than I was pro-Buhari. "Nothing is more
unworthy of leadership than to degrade a system by which one attains
fulfillment, and this is what the nation witnessed time and time again
under Jonathan, who was increasingly becoming intolerant of opposition
in an escalating streak of impunity and authoritarian madness, which
was most blatant and unconscionable. The 'militricians' - soldiers
turned politicians in power - aren't looking for excellence; their
civilian cohorts are worse. Short cuts and how to circumvent the
system for the profit of a few are the norm of governance. Those who
do honest work are derided as lacking the skill to fit it. Ironically,
things haven't quite changed a bit after 16 years of democracy in the
country." he said.
--The Cable