Charles Oputa (better known as Charly Boy) has taken a dig at Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka over his recent outings in the media, saying he can never be the man the late Prof. Chinua Achebe was.
Achebe, regarded as the “father of African literature”, died on 21st March 2013 aged 82 years, while Soyinka is sub-Saharan Africa’s first Nobel Laureate in Literature.
In the past few days, Soyinka had criticised the vice presidential candidate of the Labour Party, Dr Yusuf Datti Baba-Ahmed and the ‘OBIdients’ describing the movement as one of the “most repulsive, off-putting concoctions he ever encountered in any political arena”, for which he was condemned and called many names.
Charly Boy, who supported Mr Peter Obi of the Labour Party during the 2023 elections, joined the conversation by taking to Twitter on Saturday morning to say he has lost the respect he had for the Nobel Laureate.
He tweeted: “The kin respect I had for dis man, was almost the kind of respect I had for my stainless father, the Socrates of the Supreme Court. It has finally dawned on me that Soyinka can never be the man Chinua Achebe was.
“Look at a man many Nigerians put on such high pedestal reducing himself to a boyiboyi for criminal politicians. What a f..king big shame”.
For delivering a series of landmark judgements, Charly Boy’s father, Justice Chukwudifu Oputa (1916 to 2014) earned the sobriquet Socrates and Cicero.
While some opinion holders have suggested that it would have been better for Soyinka to stay from sharing his thoughts on partisan politics as he has always done, others have hailed his stance.
