“Go back to school, your problem is ignorance” – Wole Soyinka refuses to be pressured into tearing green card
Wole Soyinka will not bow to pressure from online commentators to tear his Green Card as he promised if Donald Trump won the US elections.
Since the bombastic Republican candidate emerged winner, several online commentators have been lashing out at Soyinka to go ahead with his promise, with the renowned playwright even becoming a victim of internet trolls.
Soyinka, in a statement, has hit back at his detractors, maintaining that getting rid of his US pass isn’t for show. He described the online commentators as “noisome creatures” whose ignorance resonates largely on whatever they comment on.
“Let me end with a Red Card to those noisome creatures, the nattering nit-wits of Internet: maybe Trumpland is not as despicable as the Naijaland you impose on our reality from your secure cesspits of anonymity,” he said in a statement titled: “Red card, green card– Notes towards the management of hysteria”
“Go back to school. Your problem is ignorance, ignorance of whatever subject you so readily comment upon. Learn to study your subject before opening up on issues beyond your grasp.
“Sometimes you make one feel like swapping one green for another, out of embarrassment for occupying the same national space as you.”
The Nobel Laurette said that his statement to tear his US green card was made while addressing a group of students at Oxford University and was not a public lecture.
“If it even becomes convenient to bring it forward, I intend to do so, but please don’t come at me with plaints of time imprecision,” he said.
“I never discussed it with you, nor invited you to a private decision whose execution was already in the making.”
“Do not try to browbeat me. It’s a waste of time – all you have to do is immerse yourselves in my antecedents. It will not attempt to deal with the notion of an exit time-table as conceived by others.”
In the statement, Soyinka also narrated why he decided in the past to issue a ‘Red Card’ to countries such as Australia, China, South Africa and Cuba.
