Ode to Soyinka at 81

Wole Soyinka, poet, playwright, social activist and Africa’s first Nobel laureate in literature, turned 81 on July 13.

In his birthday message to Soyinka, Ibikunle Amosun, Ogun State governor, described him as “a quintessential scholar who bestrides the literary world like a colossus”, adding that the Nobel laureate “has continued to be a supply of inspiration to youths throughout the globe on prime-notch scholarship, values of business and public spiritedness”.

Indeed, Wole Soyinka’s literary prowess has been globally acknowledged. In 1986, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, “the first Nobel Prize awarded to an African writer or to any writer from the ‘new literatures’ that have emerged in the former colonies of the British Empire”.

But his activities have not been limited to the world of literature and scholarship. Apart from being widely acclaimed as the man behind the establishment of the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Soyinka, a vocal human rights activist, has over the years consistently remained a strong critic of successive Nigerian governments, especially the country’s many military dictators, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe.

As early as 1960, the year Nigeria gained political independence from Britain, Soyinka’s ‘A Dance of The Forest’ won a contest as the official play for Nigerian Independence Day. The play, a biting criticism of Nigeria’s political elite, is a satire on the fledgling nation showing that the present is no more a golden age than was the past. On October 1, 1960, it premiered in Lagos as Nigeria celebrated its sovereignty.

In 1967, as the tension between the Federal Government in Lagos and the Eastern Region grew, Soyinka reportedly had a secret and unofficial meeting with the then military governor of Eastern Nigeria, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, at Enugu in an effort to avert the impending civil war.

When the civil war broke out, he wrote an article appealing for cease-fire. As a result, he was accused of conspiring with the Biafran secessionists, arrested by the Yakubu Gowon military government and placed in solitary confinement for 22 months. But he was undaunted. Though refused writing materials, he still wrote a significant body of poems and notes criticising the Nigerian government.

Soyinka was also very active during the civil disturbances following the annulment of the June 12, 1993 presidential election said to have been won by MKO Abiola. Matters got to a head during the Sani Abacha junta and Soyinka embarked on exile from 1993-1998.

Since the return to civil rule in 1999, Soyinka has remained very vocal, speaking up whenever silence was not golden.

Even his 1986 Nobel acceptance speech, titled “This Past Must Address Its Present”, which was dedicated to Nelson Mandela, was an eloquent criticism against the apartheid regime in South Africa.

It was Niyi Osundare, poet, essayist and recipient of the Nigeria National Merit Award, who best captured the essence of the man whom many refer to as Nigeria’s William Shakespeare. In a paper titled “Soyinka: The Lion and His Many Jewels”, Osundare wrote, “I know of no other African writer today that embodies and typifies the ideals of the aesthetic and social accountability of art the way Soyinka so impressively does. And apart from Christopher Okigbo and Ken Saro-Wiwa who paid the supreme sacrifice, no other Nigerian writer has risked so much, suffered so repeatedly in daring the behemoth of evil and misrule in Nigeria, that promising but cruelly misgoverned country.”

Born in Abeokuta in 1934, Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka attended Government College Ibadan, University College Ibadan, and University of Leeds, United Kingdom.

We join all good people across the world to appreciate Wole Soyinka on the auspicious occasion of his 81st birthday and to wish him many more fruitful years.