Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka has dissociated himself from a video showing some members of the National Association of Seadogs, popularly known as the Pyrates Confraternity, mocking the presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the 2023 election, Bola Tinubu.
In the video, members of the Confraternity during a procession gyrated to an anti-Tinubu song and poked fun at the former Lagos State governor for a speech he made in June in Abeokuta, Ogun State, where he asked that power should be handed over to him.
The members of the Pyrates Confraternity sang, “Hand dey shake, leg dey shake, Baba wey no well, e de shout emi lo kan (Hands are shaking, legs are shaking. A sick old man is shouting ‘it’s my turn’). “Emi lo kan (2ce), Baba wey no well, him dey shout emi lokan (It’s my turn (2ce), a sick old man is shouting ‘it’s my turn’”. Tinubu, who seemed desperate during the speech, said, ‘Emi lo kan’, meaning ‘It’s my turn’.
Tinubu narrated how he consoled President Muhammadu Buhari after he had failed three times to become Nigeria’s President. Eventually, a political alliance spearheaded by Tinubu ensured Buhari won the presidential election in 2015.
However, Soyinka who founded Pyrates Confraternity as a university student in Ibadan, Nigeria, described making a mockery of Tinubu due to his ill-health as distasteful.
He said, “My attention has been drawn to a video clip making internet rounds, of a dancing and chanting group, in red and white costume, purportedly members of the Pyrates Confraternity.
“The display acidly targets a presidential candidate in the awaited 2023 elections. Since the whole world knows of my connection with that fraternity, it is essential that I state in clear, unambiguous terms, that I am not involved in that public performance, nor in any way associated with the sentiments expressed in the songs. Like any other civic group, the Pyrates Confraternity is entitled to its freedom of expression, individually or collectively.