Wole Soyinka, at nearly 92, remains mentally alert and linguistically formidable, according to public observations during the 2023 elections. He publicly criticized Peter Obi's running mate, Datti Ahmed, and Obi's supporters, accusing them of disrespect and incitement after Ahmed claimed the election was stolen. Soyinka dismissed Obi's attempts to appease him, referring to him as "Gbajue Peter." While he condemned what he described as mob behaviour online, he remained silent as President Bola Tinubu's administration enacted harsh economic policies, repressed hunger protests, detained minors without trial, and removed an elected governor temporarily for political reasons. The $14 billion Lagos-Calabar coastal highway was awarded to billionaire billionaire Olakunle Alake, a close associate of Tinubu, without competitive bidding. Key government positions have been concentrated among Yoruba elites, and controversial figures, including a convicted money launderer linked to the Abacha regime, received national honours. Despite these developments, Soyinka maintained silence for three years, citing a personal one-year presidential honeymoon policy, later extending it. He recently broke that silence not to condemn systemic abuses, but to criticize the security detail surrounding Seyi Tinubu, the president's son. At a public event celebrating the coastal road project, Soyinka described himself as "a sucker for roads."
Wole Soyinka's silence on the most consequential governance crises of Tinubu's first three years — from economic collapse to judicial subversion — stands in stark contrast to his past vocal resistance, raising uncomfortable questions about the selectivity of moral authority in old age. Once a fearless critic of tyranny, he now reserves his sharpest words not for the architects of national decline, but for the convoy of a president's son, a symptom dwarfed by the disease.
The context is not just political but generational. Soyinka's era of activism was defined by personal risk and exile; today's repression unfolds through legalistic smothering and economic strangulation, yet he offers no comparable resistance. His silence coincides with the awarding of Nigeria's second-highest honour to a man who helped loot the treasury under Abacha, and the allocation of Africa's largest road contract to a Tinubu ally without transparency. These are not minor lapses but structural betrayals. That he chose to appear at the launch of the Lagos-Calabar project — a symbol of opaque patronage — undermines his moral posture.
Ordinary Nigerians, especially the youth who once looked to him as a beacon, now see a figure who condemns online insults but not the detention of child protesters. The poor, crushed by fuel subsidy removal and inflation, hear no outcry from a man who once wrote that silence in the face of evil is a form of death. His symbolic protest against Seyi Tinubu's convoy rings hollow when the state has weaponized the judiciary and security forces against dissent.
This is not an isolated lapse but part of a broader pattern where elder icons retreat into selective criticism, preserving comfort over confrontation. When moral giants rationalize silence, they inadvertently legitimise power. Soyinka's legacy remains intact, but his present inaction feeds a dangerous precedent: that critique is only owed to the powerless, never the once-friends in high places.
