Former Aviation Minister, Femi Fani-Kayode has frowned at the attack on Professor Wole Soyinka by the President Muhammadu Buhari Presidency.
The former minister said the Presidency should understand that Soyinka remained a Nobel Laureate, whose shoes the Presidency “are not fit to lick.”
In reaction to Soyinka’s criticism of Buhari’s lockdown of Lagos and Ogun states as well as Abuja for 14 days over COVID-19, Buhari’s senior aide on media and publicity, Garba Shehu, on Wednesday asked Nigerians to only take serious information from scientists and medical specialists on issues of COVID-19 and not fiction writers.
“In the meantime, we ask the people of Nigeria to trust the words of our doctors and scientists – and not fiction writers – at this time of national crisis.
“Yesterday, the esteemed Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, made comments on the legal status and description of 14-day lockdown announced by President Muhammadu Buhari.
“Prof. Soyinka is not a medical professor. His qualifications are in English literature, and his prizes are for writing books and plays for theatres,” Shehu said.
But responding in a post on his verified Twitter account, Fani-Kayode wrote, “When he supported you in 2015 you hailed & praised him. Now that he has criticised you publicly about your handling of the COVID 19 pandemic you call him a ‘mere fiction writer’ that ‘no-one should listen to’. That is a Nobel Laureate: a man whose shoes you are not fit to lick.”