NOBEL laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka says the social media in Nigeria has been taken over by people he described as “barbarians.”
Soyinka, who made this comment on Saturday, said that social media has been dragged down to the lowest common denominator in the country, adding that social media is still valid – as means of interactions in other climes.
“In a situation where disagreement in an election can lead one being labelled something phobia or whatever. It is certainly amazing that in a community of intellect, genuine and authentic value and then we have a situation of something called social media. The social media is awash with accusations of one being a kind of ethnophobic. So strange to me but that is what we have been reduced to. And when that kind of accusation comes, there is no need or value in trying to say you are not. You just say, Thank you very much! The complement of ethnophobia is ethnophilia,’’ the Nobel laureate said on his investiture as an honorary member of the Abeokuta Club.
“So, if you are ethnophobic in one direction, then pull back and become ethnophilia in the other direction and leave those who claim that they are being phobilised to wallow in their own campaign of hatred, of dehumanisation of others simply because of glaring routine mundane activities as holding a political opinion, as making political observation and warning others not to plunge the society into the dark age from which we barely emerged at very cruel dictatorship, the most cruel this nation has ever had.