Nobel Laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka, stated this on Saturday in Lagos after he emerged the national Chairman of the newly registered party, the Democratic Front for a Peoples Federation (DFPF).
Soyinka was elected unopposed at the party’s convention held at Ikeja Airport Hotel.
In his post-election address, Soyinka said that the DFPF came on board to sanitise and transform Nigeria’s nationhood into a democratic sanctuary for all her citizens.
“The DFPF for now is disinterested in the overall national scene. But after taking control in one state, one council, one ward, it would begin to reach out through example to others, gradually evolving a civic rule that governs and performs through mutual collaboration,’’ he said.
Soyinka said that this political model of the DFPF was practised in many parts of the world and urged INEC to allow the party to limit itself to activities within one state.
He expressed concern that the nation had been “sucked dry while a minority is so lubricated that they slip out of grasp when their hands are caught in the till’’.
He said that there was a need to change the nation from the daily routine of brutish existence where the once unthinkable and unacceptable had become the norm.
``These and other anomalies will occupy the minds of this new party and their associates until the full transformation and re-humanization of the nation’’ he added.
The Nobel Laureate said that the DFPF was ready to work with parties whose written or unwritten manifestoes are in the spirit of DFPF.
He disclosed that the late Beko Ransome-Kuti and late Chima Ubani were founding members of the party which was denied registration when it was first founded in 2002.
He said the party would scrutinise any member that would want to join the DFPF , and that it would only admit those who defected from another party on principle. “ Defection is two-edged . There is defection on principle , there is defection for opportunism .DFPF should not be a container -bin for the rejected of other parties , but should even take pains to woo those who had demonstrated a progressive commitment beyond the political ideology of the present, ” he said.
He lamented on kleptocractic dictatorship and democractic kleptocracy, which he described as the major cankerworm that had destroyed the nation , saying that an opportunity had come for youths to take over the reins of government in the nation and effect the needed changes. “ What is pernicious is to deny the young saplings a chance to prove their resilience and surviving powers,” Prof Soyinka added.
He also used the occasion of the launch to pay tribute to late Dr Beko ransome Kuti and Comrade Chima Ubani who were founding members of the party but were not alive to see the birth of the party.
In a goodwill message, the Convener of the Save Nigeria Group, Pastor Tunde Bakare, said that he was at the convention to identify with Soyinka.
A female activist, Ankio Briggs and the president of the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, Alhaji Yerrima Shettima, were in absentia elected woman leader and vice chairman North East respectively at the convention.
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