Despite the downpour and flood, which almost paralysed Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, last Friday evening, this year’s Wole Soyinka International Cultural Exchange (WSICE84 2018) attracted over 1000 students from the state. There were also 84 others drawn from across the country at the celebration. Assistant Editor Arts OZOLUA UHAKHEME reports.
In the past eight years, Nobel Laureate Prof Wole Soyinka has dedicated his birthdays to developing the minds of young Nigerians through cultural advocacy and educational programming tagged: Wole Soyinka International Cultural Exchange (WSICE).
Last weekend at his Ijegba forest home in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, Soyinka hosted 84 students drawn from across the country. Guided by this year’s theme: The pursuit of truth: Lies and the national psyche, the students participated in workshop, eassay competition, drama presentation, free expressive creative session, do your own thing and one-on- one interactive session with the Nobel Laureate.
High point of the four-day event was the presentataion of prizes to winners of the essay contest by Ogun State Governor Senator Ibikunle Amosun, who urged the youth to be inspired by the good example and the legacy laid by Prof Soyinka. He urged them to take advantage of WSICE programmes held yearly to mark the birthday of the Nobel Laureate who turned 84. He also challenged the youth to aspire to greatness, urging them to grow to be professors and beyond.
Amosun, represented by his deputy, Mrs Yetunde Onanuga, said: “I want to encourage you that our father (Soyinka) has laid a very good example and he has also laid a legacy for all of you to follow in the educational line. And this has been what he has been doing for the last nine years.
“I don’t know who the winners will be this year, but I know all of you are winners and that because you have put in a lot into this programme. I want to assure you that the sky wouldn’t be your limit if you continue this way.
“I want to encourage you to continue to be good children, face your studies squarely, continue to respect your elders, your teachers and those who would come around you and by the grace of God our father, who we are here to celebrate, you know who he is, you will also grow to be a professor and go beyond.’’
Reacting to questions from the students, Soyinka described this year’s edition as the most meaningful, significant and instructive of all the editions of his birthday, adding that the principles of justice, fairness, equity, honesty and integrity were adhered to in the contest. This, he said, should be practised at last Saturday’s governorship election, which held in Ekiti at the sametime the essay contest held in Abeokuta.
“There is another contest. It is not without significant that you were told that at the very beginning that every effort has been made for a fair decision to the extent that numbers were given and not names. So, the stress is on justice, fairness, equity, honesty and integrity in the competition. Something similar is taking place on a different dimension elsewhere as we are gathered here. It’s an election, a democratic election; it is also supposed to be based on honesty, truthfulness, equity, fairness and integrity.
“And so the lesson, which you are stressing here, is a lesson or virtue, which we hope is practicalised elsewhere in Ekiti right now and it doesn’t matter what the result is, perhaps my own opinion or idea. But, what I will want all of you to take from it is the lesson or virtue of equity, fairness and justice. That exercise, which is costing billions of naira will be worthless, totally rubbish if those virtues or principles are abandoned and if they are not demonstrated in the exercise and the ultimate result.
“So you are saying to the rest of the nation that look, take a look at us here, the way we gathered from all corners of the nation in the spirit of fraternity, solidarity, fairness, to elect somebody, who is a representative of our creativity, intelligence, education and capabilities and that we are expecting that the same principles be applied over the borders of Ogun State.
“The greatest birthday present I can receive is to learn that the election has been free and fair no matter who wins, that is what is instructive about the timing of this particular edition above any other ones,” Soyinka said.
On what inspired him to go into literature writing, Soyinka said: “I enjoyed reading, I was considered very precocious as a child. Anything, any piece of paper anywhere I always wanted to read it. And, of cause, that meant reading books and so on. And we all come from some tradition that involves storytelling, epic narrative etc. And elders used to tell us stories, we ourselves used to get together as children to tell stories, to repeat those stories. I realised along the way that I never liked to re-tell a story exactly as I heard it. I will always make up things. My siblings will say no, no, it didn’t go that way. I will say that’s how I want it to go. That’s how creativity begins. It begins with act to material and you try to reinterpret that material. Whether its materials of poetry, epic, narratives etc. It became a habit and I don’t really know when I decided to do literature because I wanted to be so many things. I didn’t know Mathematics and I wanted to be a pilot. People said I could be a lawyer because I was very argumentative. One time I wanted to be a doctor because there was a relation that was a doctor and I liked the way he dressed etc and even at that I knew this is what I wanted to do. Listen to your own instinct and take a decision.”
The Nobel Laureate, who described prizes as mere bonuses, said he did not worry about laurels, but noted that it did not mean one shouldn’t compete. He said the important thing was to ‘fulfill yourself creatively’.
“I don’t put any prize in mind as inspiration for writing. Create first and send in your work to any contest, if it wins fine and if it doesn’t don’t worry too. Also, when you write your first work, be prepared to receive your rejection slip. Publishers have so many reasons for publishing or not publishing and those reasons are not always the questions of the quality of the writing. A publisher is a business person, if he can’t make his money, he will not publish your work. Some of the more creative publishers will publish what I call ‘sellable’ and then use the profit to promote what they consider excellent literature. So, a lot of it depends on luck, you never know what a jury is looking for,” he added.
A 17-year-old, Onyemelukwe Brandon Obioma, emerged overall winner of the essay contest.
Obioma is a Senior Secondary 2 student of Dority International Secondary School, Abayi, Aba, Abia State. Second and third positions went to Mbagwu Nzubechukwu of Federal Government College, Owerri, Imo State and Okoronkwo Mmesomachi, of Dority International Secondary School, Aba.
Obioma’s winning entry was his analysis of one of Soyinka’s poem The children of this land.
Themed: The pursuit of truth (Truth and the National Psyche), the contest featured 84 students from secondary schools across the country. The number was symbolic of Soyinka’s age.
Obioma wrote analyses of three of Soyinka’s poems at the 1000-seater amphi-theatre in the Autonomous Residency, Ijegba (ARI) in the forested part of Ibara Housing Estate, Abeokuta.
The winners were presented with awards by Mrs. Onanuga at a mini- courtyard in Soyinka’s home.
The WSICE is a yearly programme initiated in 2010 by the management of ZMirage Multimedia Company led by the technical theatre exponent and businessman, Alhaji Teju Kareem, and United States-based Global New Haven headed by theatre director and culture scholar Prof Segun Ojewuyi.
EdeatoAgbeniyi, poet, musician and culture activist, also performed at this edition.
Also at the event were visiting US-based thespians Barretta Chullen of Southern Illinois University, Carbondale and Susan Harrocks, a theatre director and newly-elected president, The Stage Company, US.
