Prove allegations of fake credentials against me, Soyinka dares accusers

Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka

Prove allegations of fake credentials against me, Soyinka dares accusers

Nobel laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka, on Friday, gave those accusing him of parading fake academic credentials 30 days to submit all their evidence to the relevant agencies for investigation. He noted that if found culpable, he would strip himself of any titles and honours he might have garnered in his career.

He also said that failure by the accusers to provide evidence within the stipulated time would mean they lack honour and should, as a token of moral recompense, “undertake to jump off the bridge of the symbolic River Niger”.

One Joseph Dahip had in a 1998 article referenced a 1996 report in which a scholar, Prof James Gibbs, was quoted as unravelling some claims allegedly made by Soyinka.

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The 1996 article partly read, “The claim by Professor Wole Soyinka that he obtained a first-class bachelors degree in English Literature from Leeds University has been challenged. Instead, what the Nobel laureate actually obtained from Leeds was a second-class degree. This startling revelation was made by Professor James Gibbs who has closely monitored the activities of former Leeds students in English literature.”

The report quoted Gibbs as saying that he relied on a variety of sources, including contemporary Leeds publications, archival material, Soyinka’s work and “interviews I had with him” in arriving at the facts he had on Soyinka’s academic records.

But Soyinka in a Friday statement titled, ‘A moral call to amoral conscripts’, said he was awaiting the decision of his lawyers on whether or not to file a legal action.

He stated, “A document of unmatchable scurrility, last encountered during General Sani Abacha’s global campaign of calumny against opponents of his despotic, infernally venal and homicidal reign, is back in circulation. Duly modified to suit a debased internet culture, it is making its grimy rounds ironically under the auspices of a democratic political party, supposedly dedicated to an ethos of freedom of opinion and expression. The contents of that script are attributed, as before, to the scholastic industry of a Bristol schoolteacher.