By Olasunkanmi Akoni

LAGOS – Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, yesterday, wept for Nigeria as a country with no more role model to take up the leadership struggle for the betterment and emancipation of desired society.

Soyinka said those who really meant well for the leadership struggle had all died and thus left yet-to-be-filled vacuum.

Soyinka made the remarks in his address as a special guest of honour at the symposium to mark the 45th birthday of the President, Campaign for Democracy (CD,) Dr. Joe Okei-Odumakin, at the Airport Hotels Ikeja, Lagos.

He said whenever he looked around for a possible self-replacement, he found it too difficult to vouch for any model especially among the youths.

According to him, among the remaining campaigners for desired society, only very few of them only stand out for the genuineness of what real human rights groups or personalities ought to be, saying: “When I look at the vast majority of those calling themselves leaders, I lament even privately because our youths no longer have role models; role models have all gone, the only few model we have left is the one we have all come to celebrate today.

“When I look around and I feel the consistency of Odumakin, I am comfortable that I will be leaving a good legacy in a good campaigner,” he said, urging Nigerian women to, like Odumakin, take up the challenge of asking questions with the motive of putting things right.

Also speaking, Governor Olusegun Mimiko of Ondo State prayed for more life and prosperity for Odumakin and family, adding that by the time she marks her 50th anniversary, “Nigeria will have a lot to celebrate too.”

The Vice-Presidential candidate for the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC,) Pastor Tunde Bakare, recalled that he joined politics to effect unavoidable change in the nation’s polity and social strata, saying: “If you do not seek power, you cannot change policies; that was what struck me to join politics.”