Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka on Tuesday announced plans to launch a new political party after years of harshly criticizing corruption and mismanagement in the oil-rich nation.

In brief comments at an event to commemorate the renowned writer's 76th birthday, Nigeria's only Nobel laureate said he hoped to form a party of "progressives" to contest elections expected early next year.

The author of "The Swamp Dwellers" criticised the current generation of leaders in Nigeria, where oil wealth has been squandered and the government has failed to provide basic services, such as sufficient electricity.

"My generation has failed the nation," he said, pledging to launch the party in September and calling it an "organ of collaboration for progressive forces".

Soyinka, who won the Nobel literature prize in 1986, urged Nigerians to join the new party to unseat the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP), which has been in office since May 1999 following the country's return to civilian rule.

Tuesday's event in his honour also featured a lecture by the ex-head of the country's anti-graft agency, Nuhu Ribadu, who returned to Nigeria recently after going into exile last year.

He had fled Nigeria after surviving an assassination bid, allegedly over his anti-graft crusade in a country ranked as one of the world's most corrupt by Transparency International.

"Corruption has made it difficult for the country to give adequate protection to its only source of revenue: petroleum and gas," he said.

"The result is that today, Nigeria has one of the lowest per capital incomes in the world."

He said "political leaders in the last 30 years have converted such revenue to sources of easy personal wealth..."

Ribadu, a retired policeman, was appointed chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission by former president Olusegun Obasanjo in 2001 but was removed in controversial circumstances six years later.

Source: Web