If you love the literary arts, and your mother-in-law shares the same birthday with Nigeria’s Nobel laureate in Literature, you may have to join issues – if you catch the drift. This here today, is some form of sentimental journey. Now that all necessary disclosures have been made upfront, it’s to the job of paying tribute to the literary giant, Prof. Oluwole Akinwande Soyinka. He carries the Nobel laurel with the most dignity than any other living recipient of the mark of genius.
In the year of Nigeria’s Centenary and the 50th Anniversary of Chinua Achebe’s ‘Arrow of God,’ and despite the machinations of the enemies, like corrupt public officials, despotic leaders and their killer goons, Soyinka turned 80, even if it was a rather subdued celebration. Subdued, perhaps, because his soul mate, Bola Ige, who convened the somewhat now forgotten Soyinka Festival, is no more. Perhaps, also in deference to the plight of the unfortunate Chibok Girls, who have yet to receive justice.

For Soyinka, justice is the first principle or condition of life. It feels as if ants are crawling all over his body whenever he perceives a situation that resembles a threat to human rights. And that explains why he speaks to power at all times, even at grave danger to himself. He once recalled to this writer, that during the (Shall one say the near-epic?) battle against the Nigerian despot, Gen. Sani Abacha, he once faced a moment of it’s-all-about-to-end, when he ran into some individuals, whose names shall not be mentioned here, on what felt like a clear mission to eliminate him. (It seemed his varied schemes at moving incognito had failed this time; but his luck held.) Soyinka had used the platform provided by his literary genius to devastating effect against the Abacha regime.
It is probably difficult to decide on what score Soyinka is greater, as a literary giant or as an incurable civil rights activist. His achievements on both career paths have been almost at par. He has probably taken as much activist steps as he has written books. It was widely suggested that he held up a radio station in 1965, in order to prevent the playing of the recorded victory speech of Ladoke Akintola, who was widely believed to have fraudulently won reelection as the Premier of the Western Region in the then collapsing Nigerian First Republic. At the threshold of the Nigerian Civil War, Soyinka suffered solitary confinement for a spell in Gen. Yakubu Gowon’s gulag, for daring to cross enemy lines, in his single-minded mission to persuade Emeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, not to lead a separatist Biafra out of Nigeria.
His prison memoir, ‘The Man Died,’ gives a vivid account of his throes in jail. Yet, he came back from exile, which he escaped into after his release from jail, to take on the vicious Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo military government; the drifting Shagari administration; the dour-faced duo of Generals Muhammadu Buhari and Tunde Idiagbon, whose government he described as deaf; and the Gestapo-like regime of Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, who brought the curse of Structural Adjustment Programme on Nigeria, before criminally annulling the June 12, 1993 Presidential Election believed to have been freely and fairly won by the late Bashorun M.K.O. Abiola. He later squared up with the reinvented ‘civilian’ Obasanjo, whose administration he probably thought was a phony democratic government.
Perhaps, the magnum opus of his civil rights activism came with his role, alongside others, in the struggle against the evil regime of incubus Abacha. He participated in every way he could to ensure that the tyrannical house of cards that Abacha tried to make of Nigeria crumbled. (You might say the walls of Abacha’s Jericho fell down flat!) In his biography, ‘Out of the Shadows,’ the Governor of Ekiti State, Kayode Fayemi, disclosed in an account of the pirate Radio Kudirat, that Soyinka’s National Liberation Council of Nigeria provided the major access to the project’s facilitators. Even as old age has crept on him, the lion in Soyinka has not receded. Indeed, in him, the man has not died, who confronts fumbling public servants, the clueless Jonathan administration and insurgent Boko Haram
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics reads: “The good man ought to be a lover of self, since he will then act nobly, and so benefit himself and aid his fellows; but the bad man ought not to be a lover of self, since he will follow his base passions, and so injure himself and his neighbours.” Soyinka argues that the man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny. As a civil rights activist, he, no doubt, has gone to jail more than any other Nigerian writer. Perhaps, those who exceed his years as a prisoner of conscience will be gadfly Gani Fawehinmi, his cousin Dr. Beko Ransome-Kuti, attorneys Alao Aka-Bashorun and Femi Falana. But no one beats his records as an exile. Well, maybe, Peter Pan, journalist Peter Enahoro.
Nowadays, Soyinka seems to be more involved with seemingly Corporate Social Responsibility projects: Readings for school kids; lending his name to noble causes; cameo appearances at wholesome events; organising Black Heritage fests; visiting notable cultural sites; and acting as cheer leader for good governance. He once visited a former Kano State Governor, Ibrahim Shekarau, who had refused to defect to the Peoples Democratic Party, when some of his fellow All Nigerian Peoples’ Party governors did. (Shekarau has finally defected to the PDP, and won himself the plum portfolio of the Minister of Education). Soyinka had earlier collaborated, as founding Chairman, with the Babangida regime to establish the Federal Road Safety Commission, in an attempt to stem the senseless carnage on Nigerian roads.
Soyinka, a recipient of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, was born on July 13, 1934 to father, S.A. Soyinka, a school head teacher, and a mother, whom he describes as the ‘Wild Christian’ for reasons he hasn’t explained. The essential Soyinka is perhaps from his blood link to the Ransome-Kutis, through his mother. That should explain his civil activism, creative genius, and seeming eccentric and non-conformist (though not entirely bohemian) streak. If you were a first cousin to maverick musician, the late Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, your genius and eccentricity could be easily explained.
Despite his lamentation that his was a Wasted Generation, Soyinka, author, playwright, poet, actor, musician, and astute connoisseur of good wine (and some say, good women), cannot be counted among that lot. His cup is full, and he has achieved much as an academician and artiste. His fecund and prodigious mind has produced literary works as varied as poetry, like ‘An Ode To My First White Hair;’ satirical allegory, like the novel, ‘The Interpreters;’ the light and hilarious playlet, ‘Child Internationale;’ epics, like ‘The King And His Horseman;’ social jibes, like the Jero Plays; autobiographies, like ‘Ake;’ fiction, like ‘Ibadan: The Penkelemess Years;’ and the lecherous, ‘The Lion and The Jewel.’ He has written quite a bit of literary criticisms, done political commentary in the song, ‘I Love My Country,’ and has kept media columns.
The breadth of Soyinka’s work is extremely diverse, that no one should be in any doubt why he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. For the chink in Soyinka’s armour, he will be the one to do his mea culpa.