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Tag: Soyinka

  • Buhari in a trance – Soyinka

    Buhari in a trance – Soyinka

    With the attendant anomalies tainting the current administration, Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has said President Muhammadu Buhari may be operating under a trance.

    He said the sooner the President gets out of that trance, the better for the country.

    Soyinka, who spoke at a press conference on the damaging consequences of marauding herdsmen activities in the country, said there are several unforced errors going in Nigeria.

    With conference titled:  “Herdsmen and Nation:  Valentine Card or Valedictory Rites?, he gave an analogical tale of a state whose master’s insensitivity allows for the overbearing actions of his subjects.

    He lamented that mass destruction of farmlands in the most horrifying manner had become a norm festering with the encouragement of the government’s body language.

    He described as appalling the position of the Inspector- General of Police, Ibrahim Idris, that the continuing loss of lives in Benue and consequent increase of internal refugees was simply a communual clash, stressing that little would be achieved in security without the adoption of state policing.

    “If the IGP can seat in Abuja and say of an event that is happening under the jurisdiction of a governor in another state is just a communal clash when people are being slaughtered and their villages are being occupied, it shows of complete alienation. Then there is the authority of Governors who have the ultimate authority for security. It is the Governor who is supposed to be the Chief Security Officer. We are now back to authoritative voices saying indeed, state police need to be decentralized. We have been saying it and others have been saying for a long time. We are now getting back to the commonsensical issue that the nation cannot function under a single police command,” he said.

     

     

  • Soyinka: all lives are equal, but a cow’s is more equal than others

    Soyinka: all lives are equal, but a cow’s is more equal than others

    Nobel Laureate Prof. WOLE SOYINKA, in this piece titled ‘Impunity rides again’, flays the herdsmen killings in Benue State. Soyinka picks holes in the Federal Government’s reaction to the massacre, which he describes as history repeating itself.  

    It is happening all over again. History is repeating itself and, alas, within such an agonisingly short span of time. How often must we warn against the enervating lure of appeasement in face of aggression and will to dominate! I do not hesitate to draw attention to Volume III of my INTERVENTION Series, and to the chapter on The Unappeasable Price of Appeasement. There is little to add, but it does appear that even the tragically fulfilled warnings of the past leave no impression on leadership, not even when identical signs of impending cardiac arrest loom over the nation. Boko Haram was still at that stage of putative probes when cries of alarm emerged. Then the fashion ideologues of society deployed their distancing turns of phrase to rationalise what were so obviously discernable as an agenda of ruthless fundamentalism and internal domination. Boko Haram was a product of social inequities, they preached – one even chortled: We stand for justice, so we are all Boko Haram!  We warned that – yes indeed – the inequities of society were indeed part of the story, but why do you close your eyes against other, and more critical malfunctions of the human mind, such as theocratic lunacy? Now it is happening again. The nation is being smothered in Vaseline when the diagnosis is so clearly – cancer!

    We have been here before – now, ‘before’ is back with a vengeance. President Goodluck Jonathan refused to accept that marauders had carried off the nation’s daughters; President Muhammed Buhari and his government – including his Inspector-General of Police – in near identical denial, appear to believe that killer herdsmen who strike again and again at will from one corner of the nation to the other, are merely hot-tempered citizens whose scraps occasionally degenerate into “communal clashes” – I believe I have summarised him accurately. The marauders are naughty children who can be admonished, paternalistically, into good neighbourly conduct. Sometimes of course, the killers were also said be non-Nigerians after all. The contradictions are mind-boggling.

    First the active policy of appeasement, then the language of endorsement. El Rufai, governor of Kaduna state, proudly announced that, on assuming office, he had raised a peace committee and successfully traced the herdsmen to locations outside Nigerian borders. He then made payments to them from state coffers to cure them of their homicidal urge which, according to these herdsmen, were reprisals for some ancient history and the loss of cattle through rustling. The public was up in arms against this astonishing revelation. I could only call to mind a statement by the same El Rufai after a prior election which led to a rampage in parts of the nation, and cost even the lives of National Youth Service corpers. They were hunted down by aggrieved mobs and even states had to organize rescue missions for their  citizens. Countering protests that the nation owed a special duty of protection to her youth, especially those who are co-opted to serve the nation in any capacity, El Rufai’s comment then was: No life is more important than another. Today, that statement needs to be adjusted, to read perhaps – apologies to George Orwell: “All lives are equal, but a cow’s is more equal than others.”

    This seems to be the government view, one that, overtly or by implication, is being amplified through act and pronouncement, through clamorous absence, by this administration. It appears to have infected even my good friend and highly capable Minister, Audu Ogbeh, however insidiously. What else does one make of his statements in an interview where he generously lays the blame for ongoing killings everywhere but at the feet of the actual perpetrators!  His words, as carried by The Nation Newspapers:

    “The inability of the government to pay attention to herdsmen and cow farming, unlike other developed countries, contributed to the killings.”

    The Minister continued: “Over the years, we have not done much to look seriously into the issue of livestock development in the country….we may have done enough for the rice farmer, the cassava farmer, the maize farmer, the cocoa farmer, but we haven’t done enough for herdsmen, and that inability and omission on our part is resulting in the crisis we are witnessing today.”

    No, no, not so, Audu! It is true that I called upon the government a week ago to stop passing the buck over the petroleum situation. I assure you however that I never intended that a reverse policy should lead to exonerating – or appearing to exonerate – mass killers, rapists and economic saboteurs – saboteurs, since their conduct subverts the efforts of others to economically secure their own existence, drives other producers off their land in fear and terror. This promises the same plague of starvation that afflicts zones of conflict all over this continent where liberally sown landmines prevent farmers from venturing near their prime source, the farm, often their only source of livelihood, and has created a whole population of amputees. At least, those victims in Angola, Mozambique and other former war theatres, mostly lived to tell the tale. These herdsmen, arrogant and unconscionable, have adopted a scorched-earth policy, so that those other producers – the cassava, cocoa, sorghum, rice etc farmers are brutally expelled from farm and dwelling.

    Government neglect? You may not have intended it, but you made it sound like the full story. I applaud the plans of your ministry, I am in a position to know that much thought – and practical steps – have gone into long term plans for bringing about the creation of ‘ranches’, ‘colonies’ – whatever the name – including the special cultivation of fodder for animal feed and so on and on. However, the present national outrage is over impunity. It rejects the right of any set of people, for whatever reason, to take arms against their fellow men and women, to acknowledge their exploits in boastful and justifying accents and, in effect, promise more of the same as long as their terms and demands are not met. In plain language, they have declared war against the nation, and their weapon is undiluted terror. Why have they been permitted to become a menace to the rest of us? That is the issue!

    Permit me to remind you that, early in 2016, an even more hideous massacre was perpetrated by this same Murder Incorporated – that is, a numerical climax to what had been a series across a number of Middle Belt and neighbouring states, with Benue taking the brunt of the butchery. A peace meeting was called, attended by the state government and security agencies of the nation, including the Inspector General of Police. This group attended – according to reports – with AK47s and other weapons of mass intimidation visible under their garments. They were neither disarmed nor turned back. They freely admitted the killings but justified them by claims that they had lost their cattle to the host community. It is important to emphasize that none of their spokesmen referred to any government neglect, such as refusal to pay subsidy for their cows or failure to accord them the same facilities that had been extended to cassava or millet farmers. Such are the monstrous beginnings of the culture of impunity. We are reaping, yet again, the consequences of such tolerance of the intolerable. Yes, there indeed the government is culpable, definitely guilty of “looking the other way”. Indeed, it must be held complicit.

    This question is now current, and justified:  just when is terror? I am not aware that IPOB came anywhere close to this homicidal propensity and will to dominance before it was declared a terrorist organisation. The international community rightly refused to go along with such an absurdity. For the avoidance of doubt, let me state right here, and yet again, that IPOB leadership is its own worst enemy. It repels public empathy, indeed, I suspect that it deliberately cultivates an obnoxious image, especially among its internet mouthers who make rational discourse impossible. However, as we pointed out at the time, the conduct of that movement, even at its most extreme, could by no means be reckoned as terrorism. By contrast, how do we categorize Myeti? How do we assess a mental state that cannot distinguish between a stolen cow – which is always recoverable – and human life, which is not. Villages have been depopulated far wider than those outside their operational zones can conceive. They swoop on sleeping settlements, kill and strut. They glory in their seeming supremacy. Cocoa farmers do not kill when there is a cocoa blight. Rice farmers, cassava and tomato farmers do not burn. The herdsmen cynically dredge up decades-old affronts – they did at the 2016  Benue “peace meeting” to justify the killings of innocents in the present – These crimes are treated like the norm. Once again, the nation is being massaged by specious rationalisations while the rampage intensifies and the spread spirals out of control. When we open the dailies tomorrow morning, there is certain to have been a new body count, to be followed by the arrogant justification of the Myeti Allah.

    The warnings pile up, the distress signals have turned into a prolonged howl of despair and rage. The answer is not to be found in pietistic appeals to victims to avoid ‘hate language’ and divisive attributions. The sustained, killing monologue of the herdsmen is what is at issue. It must be curbed, decisively and without further evasiveness.

    Yes, Jonathan only saw ‘ghosts’ when Boko Haram was already excising swathes of territory from the nation space and abducting school pupils. The ghosts of Jonathan seem poised to haunt the tenure of Mohammed Buhari.

  • Fuel scarcity: Something is rotten in Nigeria – Soyinka

    Fuel scarcity: Something is rotten in Nigeria – Soyinka

    Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka is dismayed by the current fuel scarcity.

    He wonders why successive governments find it difficult to fix challenges facing the country.

    He is particularly disturbed by the blame passing by those charged with the responsibility of making the country work.

    Soyinka, in a statement yesterday on the state of the nation, could not understand why the generality of Nigerians are being exposed to unnecessary hardship caused by the fuel scarcity.

    He recalled government’s promise to deal with the situation during a similar fuel crisis in 1977.

    He attached to his statement which he entitled BLAME PASSING – The New Year Gift to a Nation, the bromide of the June 7, 1977 edition of the Daily Times in which President Muhammadu Buhari, who was Petroleum minister at the time said the fuel crisis ‘may be over next year.”

    He said in the statement: “In the accustomed tradition, I wish the nation less misery in the coming year. A genuine Happy New Year Greeting is probably too extravagant a wish.

    “The accompanying news clipping from June 1977 came into my hands quite fortuitously. It is forty years old. It captures the unenviable enigma that is the Nigerian nation. It is however a masterful end-of-year image to take into the coming year, not only for the individual now at the helm of government, General Buhari, but for a people surely credited with the most astounding degree of patience and forbearance on the African continent – except of course among themselves, when they turn into predatory fiends. When many of us are blissfully departed, an updated rendition of this same clipping – with a change of cast here and there – will undoubtedly be reproduced in the media, with the same alibis, the same in-built panacea of blame passing.

    “Let this be called to our collective memory. Even before the current edition of the fuel crisis, other challenges, requiring immediate fix, had begun to monopolize national attention, relegating to the sidelines the outcry for a fundamental and holistic approach to the wearisome cycle of citizen trauma. “This has been expressed most recently, and near universally in the word “Restructuring”, defined straightforwardly as a drastic overhaul of Nigerian articles of co-existence in a more rational, equitable and decentralized manner.

    “Such an overhaul, the re-positioning of the relationship between the parts and the whole offers, it has been strongly argued, prospects of a closer governance awareness of, and responsiveness to citizen entitlement. An overhaul that will near totally eliminate the frequent spasms of systemic malfunctioning that are in-built into the present protocols of national association.

    “I recently ran the gauntlet of petroleum queues through three conveniently situated cities – Lagos, Abeokuta and Ibadan – deliberately, this Friday.

    “Even with ‘unorthodox’ aids of passage, this was no task for the faint-hearted. Just getting past fuelling stations was traumatizing, an obstacle race through seething, frustrated masses of humanity, only to find ourselves on vast stretches of emptied roads pleading for occupation.

    “As for obtaining the petroleum in the first place – the less said the better. I suspect that this government has permitted itself to be fooled by the peace of those empty streets, but also by the orderly, patient, long-suffering queues that are admittedly prevalent in the city centres.

    “It is time the reporting monitors of government move to city peripheries and sometimes even some other inner urban sectors, such as Ikeja and Maryland from time to time to see, and listen! Pronouncements – such as the 1977 above – again re-echoing by rote in 2017– are a delusion at best, a formula that derides public intelligence.

    “Buying time. Passing blame. Yes of course, the current affliction must be remedied, and fast, but is there a dimension to it that must be brought to the fore, simultaneously and forcefully? This had better be the framework for solving even a shortage that virtually paralyzed the nation.

    “Just to think laterally for a moment – what became of the initiatives by some states nearly two decades ago – Lagos most prominently – to decentralize power, and thus empower states to generate and distribute their own energy requirements? Frustrated and eventually sabotaged in the most cynical manner from the Federal centre!

    “The similarity today is frightening – for nearly four days on that earlier occasion, the nation was blacked out near entirely. We know that one survival tactic of governments is to keep their citizens in the dark over decisions that affect their lives but, this was literal!

    “And yet each such crisis, plus lesser ones, merely reiterate again and again that this national contraption, as it now stands, is simply  – dysfunctional!.

    “What this demands is that, in the process of alleviating the immediate pressing misery, we do not permit ourselves to be manipulated yet again into forgetting the MAIN issue whose ramifications exact penalties such as petroleum seizures and national power outage.

    “These are only two handy, being recent symptoms – there are several others, but this is not intended to be a catalogue of woes. Sufficient to draw attention to the Yoruba saying that goes: Won ni, Amukun, eru e wo. Oun ni, at’isale ni. Translation: Some voices alerted the K-Legged porter to the dangerous tilt of the load on his head. His response was – Thank you, but the problem actually resides in the legs.

    “The providential image above sums up a defining moment for both individual and collective self-assessment, places in question the ability of a nation to profit from past experience. Vast resources, yes, but proved unmanageable under its present structural arrangements.

    “As the tussle for the next round of power gets hotter in the coming year, the electorate will again be manipulated into losing sight of the BASE ISSUE.

    “Its noisome claque in the meantime, the automated mumus of social media, practiced in sterile deflection and trivialization of critical issues, unwittingly join hands with government to indulge in blame passing and name calling – both sides with different targets.

    “From the anguished cry of Charley Boy’s Our Mummu Done Do! to expositions from academics such as Professor Makinde’s recent intervention, the public is subjected daily to a relentless barrage of awareness, underlined in urgency. Nobody listens.

    “One wonders if many people read. And certainly, very few retain or relate – until of course the next crisis. The Labour movement declares that it awaits a guarantee of the ‘people’s backing’ before it embarks on any critical intervention.

    “Understandably. There is more than enough of the opium of blame passing on tap to lull mummus into that deep coma from which – give it a little more time – there can only be a rude awakening.

    “Sooner than later, but not as soon as pledged, the fuel crisis will pass. And then of course we shall await the next round of shortages, then a recommencement of blame passing.  What will be the commodity this time – food perhaps?

    “Maybe even potable water? In a nation of plenty, nothing is beyond eventual shortage – except of course, the commonplace endowment of pre-emptive planning and methodical execution. Forty years after, the same language of re-assurance? “There is something rotten in the state of Naija.”

  • ‘Why Tunde Bakare nicknamed me Soyinka of arts’

    ‘Why Tunde Bakare nicknamed me Soyinka of arts’

    Celebrated artist and sculptor, Dejo Victor Akinlonu, popularly called Dejak, has met and dealt with so many top art connoisseurs, especially some religious leaders, each expressing strong views about his high artistic work.

    The General Overseer of Latter Rain Assembly, Pastor Tunde Bakare, is one of such who maintained that Dejak is the Prof Wole Soyinka of arts in Nigeria.

    Dejak said this at his monument arts garden in Ikeja, Lagos during an interaction with reporters on his birthday.

    Dejak, who thanked God for sparing his life, said Pastor Bakare, an art connoisseur, gave him the licence to use his name at will as one of those who believes in the sanctity of his art works.

    Dejak’s array of high standing artistic works, which dot his Oregun monumental arts garden, boasts of giant, sculptural moldings and carvings.

    They include the Eyo masquerade and statue of the late Oba Adeniji Adele, bust of the late Alexandra Omolade Okoya Thomas at the Teslim Balogun Stadium, Surulere, Lagos.

  • Soyinka and Trump’s illegitimate kids

    Soyinka and Trump’s illegitimate kids

    This must be a depressing hour indeed for the man who “fashioned the drama of existence” and first black Nobel prizewinner in Literature, Professor Wole Soyinka. A comment uttered in what could only be a protest against the willful trampling on the dignity of the African immigrants and other “underdogs” has, alas, been twisted out of its moral joint and now forms the singsong of some idle parrots, the horde of little minds, barricading the social media.

    Ahead of the now historic November 8 (2016) US polls, Kongi told a gathering of students in America that in the event that that loose-cannon Donald Trump won he would not wait to be reminded before ripping his Green Card and evacuating the acclaimed God’s own country, his present station.

    Asked again by The Interview (Nigeria’s wave-making monthly magazine) amid the widespread shockwave that trailed the news of the Republican candidate’s victory, the literary giant neither quibbled nor wavered.

    But that did not seem to impress the cyber stalkers who, akin to the typical lynch mob lurking in Nigeria’s urban centre forever itching for a chance to festoon someone with a burning tyre, cannot wait to see the much esteemed octogenarian descend into the obscenity of publicly shredding what many would lie, if not die, to possess.

    Never one to shy away, particularly when epistolary rats are foolish enough to disturb his tail, the literary lion has since tackled his cyber assailants efficiently and effectively in a vigorous rejoinder entitled “Red Card, Green Card – Notes Towards the Management of Hysteria”.

    But this is beside the point. For me, I think the real tragedy is two-fold. For “the hysterical” not to see the Trump’s rise clearly as an urgent invitation to debate Nigeria’s place in a putative new world order defined by a man that can technically be certified as a mad man and, instead, be more obsessed with the banality of watching Soyinka physically tear his Green Card is very, very alarming indeed.

    Second is the possibility at all that a generation of Nigerian Pharisees now exist and are so blissfully ignorant of the history of their own very fatherland to, even for a drunken moment, ever doubt Soyinka’s words once the issue borders on the defense of human dignity.

    So, as we can now see, it is not only America whose moral capital seems on the decline on account of Trump’s thunderous disavowal of all the lofty values the rest of the world had associated with her in the last half a century; same ethical atrophy is clearly discernible in contemporary Nigeria with the rise of youths with neither a sense of history nor a social conscience, but more conversant with even the minutest details of, say, the soccer celebrities of European soccer leagues.

    If they had bothered to read and understand their nation’s history, they would not have easily forgotten that Soyinka had in the 90s cast away the coveted national honour CFR medal earlier bestowed on him in 1986 by General Ibrahim Babangida in protest of the June 12 annulment and the subsequent clampdown on dissent. He later risked death in leading a global campaign against Abacha despotism – was actually sentenced to death in absentia – until democracy was restored in Nigeria in 1999.

    So, could anyone have forgotten so quickly the legend of “the mystery gun-man” who stormed a public radio station in 1965 and forced the presenter to play a pre-recorded statement censoring the ruling party over perceived repression of the opposition? Again, when it was most dangerous, someone visited the Biafran enclave from the campus of University of Ibadan with a view to persuading the secessionists to return to the peace process.

    For this, he was clamped into solitary confinement by the Gowon regime for more than two years. The title of his prison memoirs “The Man Died” was inspired by revolutionary George Magaski who in his own “Letter To Compatriots” memorably declared, “The man dies in him who keeps silence in the face of tyranny.”

    So, to the cowards who today luxuriate in the anonymity of the cyber space, against the aforementioned heritage of uncommon sacrifice in pursuit and defense of noble values and honour, how much weight does a mere American Green Card carry?

    Today, these spoilt brats sired in philistinism, immersed in cheap intoxicants of ignorance, seem least troubled by the farrago of nasty things Trump said about vulnerable African immigrants, especially Nigerians.

    But all decent people like Soyinka, who treasure their own dignity as members of the human race, should be appalled. Racial integration thought irreversibly cemented in US on account of the Obama ascendancy eight years ago is what is invariably called to question by Trump’s tantrums.

    Kongi would then seem to find it exceedingly hard continuing to inhabit a space, however alluring, where a bare-faced racist holds court. Ordinarily, given his world celebrity status, Soyinka would not have needed to beg or lie to get visa into America. His offer to rip his Green Card once the US falls under Trump’s shadow should, therefore, be properly seen as a symbolic gesture of protest on behalf of his nameless compatriots among other vulnerable categories about to be meted undeserved humiliation.

    Now, as the rest of the world braces for an uncertain future, it is most logical that we first attempt to locate the trigger to the present meltdown. Prophesy two decades ago by Samuel Huntington in his seminal book, The Clash of Civilizations, on the perils of globalisation is coming to pass with chilling accuracy.

    Obsession, as he put it, of triumphalist west upon the collapse of the old Soviet Union and the socialist/communist tradition in China and elsewhere to export and implant its cultures and values around the universe with little or no regard for local sensibilities in other civilizations meant the battlefield would inevitably shift from old geographical borders to the temples of faiths and the shrines of ethnic nationalism.

    As a corollary to Brexit which shook Europe four months ago, Trump’s triumph was undoubtedly fueled by the rising tide of ethnic nationalism. The hell-raising far-right rabble are also already out in Hungary, Poland, France and Germany, baying for blood. The aborigines of affluent western nations are simply no longer willing to accept massive immigration into their countries as part of the price for globalization. Hence, the new battle cry – “Take back our country!”

    But the great paradox is that it is all a self-inflicted pain. There is no way the immigration flood largely from Syria recorded at the borders of recognizable western nations in the past two years can be isolated from the miscalculations a decade and a half earlier by the allied powers with the frenzy of “regime change” after September 11 in 2001. For instance, rogue Saddam Hussein was hurriedly uprooted from Iraq in 2003 in pursuit of a phantom weapon of mass destruction (WMD) without a coherent contingency plan to manage the aftermath in the highly combustible Middle East.

    Eight years later, the social media, a powerful tool brought by globalization, helped stoke the fire of the Arab Spring which paved the way for eccentric Moammar Ghaddafi, but a stabilizing influence in North Africa and parts of the Arab world, to be bludgeoned to death on the street of Tripoli.

    In neighboring Syria, Bashir Assad has managed to survive the Arab Spring for six years, but at a horrific human toll.

    Now, the lethal arsenal Ghaddafi left behind have been harvested by Hussein’s demobilized fighters who formed the core of ISIS, which straddles a chunk of Iraq and swath of Syria.

    What then seems utterly insufferable to Soyinka and other men and women of conscience around the world today is the unwillingness of the resurgent nativists as privileged members of the western establishment to accept that intolerance of others’ values and faiths from the outset is at the root of the moral crisis that has engulfed the world community in the past decade, of which Donald Trump is the latest mutation.

     

  • Soyinka flays reports of son’s wedding in U.S.

    Soyinka flays reports of son’s wedding in U.S.

    •Louis Odion features in Nobel laureate’s new book

    Nobel laureate Professor Wole Soyinka yesterday condemned what he described as fictional accounts of his son’s recent wedding in the United States.

    He spoke at the presentation of his new book, “Green Card, Green Gods”, at the Freedom Park, Lagos.

    The literary giant described as mischievously false reports in a section of the media that he had disapproved of his son, Oretunlewa, marrying an Igbo woman, Nneka Ekechukwu, on the basis of wide age disparity between the couple and had to be persuaded by family members to attend the nuptials in Atlanta.

    The widely circulated report had stated that “whereas Oretunlewa is 21 years old, Nneka is 30-year-old businesswoman”.

    But Soyinka said: “Oretunlewa is 27 and I should know because he is my son and Nneka is 26. In any case, what’s my business if two consenting adults decided they wanted to be together as husband and wife?”

    As a proud father, Soyinka said the least he owed his son was to offer him and his wife blessings, expressing the belief that the misrepresentation was orchestrated by “cowards and maggots of the social media who themselves are products of dysfunctional families”, envious and unhappy at other people’s moments of joy.

    He revealed that his determination to be part of the joyous occasion made him attend the church programme with one of his legs in cast.

    Displaying a photograph of the wedding to journalists at yesterday’s event, Soyinka explained: “You can see from this picture that one of my legs appears bigger than the other. It is because my left leg was in cast during that period. I had fractured it and was only diagnosed in the United States. I was in excruciating pain. And you now say I was persuaded to attend?”

    He lamented: “Part of the mischief was to lie that my son married an older rich lady who sponsored the lavish wedding. You can imagine the agony they inflict on this young couple. Both are young professionals. My son is a professional at Stanford University. Just as Nneka.”

    The poet drew a parallel between the twisting of the facts of the wedding and misrepresentation of views he expressed at a lecture in the United States two years ago by mischief-makers bent on projecting him as “anti-Igbo”.

    On a lighter note, Soyinka, a famed wine connoisseur, revealed that his own special present to his in-law was a giant-sized bottle of cognac “which is the costliest in the world. Someone had presented it to me in Nigeria long time ago. But I kept it, hoping that some day, there would a special event to utilise it. In fact, I made my wife the courier for the special consignment to the United States with a view to beating the Customs in case they wanted to bill heavily. I gave her copies of my books to explain to the Customs people that her husband is a poor writer. Luckily, the giant bottle arrived Atlanta safely without paying any tariff.”

    Soyinka, therefore, renewed his clarion call on the media to be more thorough and resist the temptation to be used to amplify and parrot falsehood.

    Meanwhile, the preeminence of The Nation commentariat has again been confirmed with the featuring of Louis Odion in the Nobel laureate’s book.

    An article written by columnist Odion entitled “Kongi and Trump’s illegitimate kids” is among the essays contained in “Intervention VII: Green Cards, Green Gods” authored by the literary giant.

    Personally introducing Mr. Odion to the audience at yesterday’s event, Prof. Soyinka described the columnist as “one of the few thorough and knowledgeable writers around.”

    Published by Bookcraft, Soyinka’s latest offering dwells on the controversy stirred by his ripping of his U.S. Green Card in fulfillment of an earlier vow against what he described as then U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s unprovoked assault on the racial sensibilities of those outside his white supremacist community, especially African immigrants.

    The incident generated a heated national debate and social media storm that subsisted for several weeks.

    Odion’s article, which had appeared in his column in November 2016, is believed to have been selected for Soyinka’s book based on its “depth and range”.

    Respected for his courage and inimitable style, Odion is a multiple-award-winning journalist.

     

  • The Christopher Okigbo we knew by Soyinka, Clark, others

    The Christopher Okigbo we knew by Soyinka, Clark, others

    The 2017 Lagos Book and Art Festival (LABAF) will be remembered for being a sequel to the conference and tributes to commemorate the passage of the renowned poet, Christopher Ifekandu Okigbo. It was organised by the Christopher Okigbo Foundation (COF) and the University of Ibadan (UI) to mark the 50th anniversary of his death. Okigbo’s daughter, Obiageli, his friends, classmates and protégé celebrate him in this report by Evelyn Osagie.

    Nobel laureate Prof Wole Soyinka, Okigbo’s friend

    Chris was a teacher, who was disciplined. He was a multivalent person – he was a poet, musician and an activist, and at the same time, an introvert. Chris was one of the genuine renaissance people of our generation. He used to accompany me on the piano in those days, right here. Francesca and myself would sing and Chris was on the piano. And he used to compose musical pieces, short pieces on the piano. The soul of Chris was music. I remember a lot of times we would be downstairs at Cambridge House; maybe his steward has prepared lunch or snack; I would go upstairs and say, ‘Chris, we are all ready now’. And I just found Chris in one of those very contemplative moods; out of that mood, marked down one line of poetry, which he would then later on read to me or to us, and say, ‘I had been busy working on that particular line at that time’.

    “He was a chicken thief. I ate out of it. When he was teaching in Fiditi (Fiditi Grammar School), and I used to drive out of campus to go and stay with him, Chris never had food in his house. He had a little backyard. Chris would spread grains of corn on a side of the fence. He made a little hole in the fence. Those chickens would come through the hole and Chris would catch the chicken. I confess. I participated in the eating of the stolen chicken, but I swear I never killed one chicken.”

     

    Prof John Pepper Clark, another  friend

    “He was a genuine person. He wasn’t a chameleon that protects itself. He was effective and useful as a poet.  I recall the first time Christopher and I really met. It was on the road at University College. He came to me where I had been confined after failing my final exams and asked why I didn’t appear in Ulli Beier’s Black Orpheus. And in the course of trying to sell me, Chris turned himself into a poet.  Chris stood out as a poet, a poet might not be there, but his works are there. His writings would always be remembered. Ever since the death of Chris, nothing had changed. Fifty years after the war, restructuring is what everybody aspires for, but for the few that benefit from how things are now right now.

     

    Eze Chukwuemeka Ike, Okigbo’s classmate

    “Umuahia taught us to play the game of cricket with a straight bat..The African Writers Association soon emerged, involving both of us and others, including Obi Wali, Mike Echeruo, et cetera. UNN saw the emergence of Chris as a talented poet with a unique, unconventional style. He would knock on my outer door at the crack of dawn, hand my wife an empty beer bottle and spoon, and instruct her to keep the rhythm, and thereafter invited both of us to listen to what came last night, namely his latest poem.

     

    Joop Berkhout, later bought Okigbo’s house

    “It is great that his daughter, Obi, is giving this kind of honour to her father. She was very small when her father died, but she kept her father alive. And even though she doesn’t live in Nigeria, but in Belgium, she was still able to keep the memory of her father alive and united his old friends, well-wishers and Okigbo’s family.

    “It is also very nice that she chose my house where her father once lived to unveil the UNESCO’s plaque in his honour that showed Okigbo’s Collection being inscribed on the Register of Memory of the World in 2007. I bought this house years after he left as a publisher.

    It feels very nice, unique and very unusual living in a house with such a historical past. The house means far more than the structure. Nobody can build a house like this anymore all over the country. This is a house that can stand up any storm or earthquake. It’s made of a solid concrete both inside and outside. This shows the creativity and class of the man, Okigbo. The man is a genius.

     

    Kole Omotoso, his protégé

    “IBADAN 1965…Mbari Club was a natural draw for an aspiring writer. Situated a mere street walk from Mokola Roundabout, past the ancient Palm Chemist and you were there in the midst of Chinua Achebe, Ulli Beier, Amos Tutuola, Wole Soyinka, Duro Ladipo and Christopher Okigbo. Lindsay Barrett had arrived from Kingston, Jamaica, via London perhaps. Poetry published in their journal BLACK ORPHEUS was available at the counter bookstall. There was a bar somewhere at the back and a small performance and rehearsal stage, again somewhere in the two-storey building.

    “It was my second year as an undergraduate at the University of Ibadan. Student Union activities had been part of the life since my closest friend Ladipo was running for PRO of the student union government. Nigerian electoral politics was boiling over…One night we went to the police station. A young writer friend of Christopher Okigbo was being detained in police custody at Iyagunku. His name? Wole Soyinka. We went to spend some time with him.

    “There was the usual banter that he was not the one, who held up the radio station and prevented the election victory speech of the premier from being broadcast. And, as alleged, at gun point, forced the radio continuity staff to substitute his own tape warning the premier and his goons to get out of the region before the people drenched the streets with their blood. Yes, we would bear witness that he was not Wole Soyinka, in fact.

    “We know what happened. It was in this circumstance that Christopher Okigbo and China Achebe and thousands of others, our friends and our families left for Enugu and other places in the Eastern Region. Soon, oro lo mu maa wi maa ro wa. Eni a bu baba re a a gbesan. Every action has consequences and those, who had been injured opted out of Nigeria through the instrumentality of Biafra. Christopher Okigbo joined the Biafran Army as a Major and went to the war front.

    “Our last telephone conversation was tense. He asked about Femi Osofisan and I asked when he was coming back. He never came back.

    “Ali Mazrui wrote The Trial of Christopher Okigbo. I could not bring myself to read the book. It seemed that Ali Mazrui accused Okigbo, the poet, of abandoning the poetic mission to take up the mission of the soldier. It was a bad case.

    “What is the ultimate mission of the poet except to speak on behalf of traduced humanity, banalised humanity, abused humanity. And sometimes speaking means putting down the drum and the pen and picking up the cudgel to enforce respect to humanity from the traducers and abusers of humanity. That is the mission of the poet everywhere, in every age. That was the mission that Christopher Okigbo died for, and how can a man and a woman die better than for what we hold dear and treasure?

     

    Okigbo’s daughter, Obi

    “He is somebody very thorough. When you read his manuscript, you’d see everything was well-thought about. And you can see in the different influences –  there is musical influences, cultural influences. He was a true Igbo, classics man. He was very much loving the poetry of his contemporaries and he also  used ancient epic structures, very contemporary and very traditional. And that’s what has earned the UNESCO Register of Memory of the World in 2007.

     

    Kunle Ajibade

    “Okigbo was a great spirit. He was charismatic and lovable. Soyinka, Achebe and Clark – all were ready to defend him.”

  • Osinbajo, Soyinka, others hail Shippers’ Council

    Osinbajo, Soyinka, others hail Shippers’ Council

    Vice President Yemi Osinbajo and Nobel laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka have  given kudos to the Nigerian Shippers Council ( NSC) for promoting investment opportunities in Inland Container Depots (ICDs) and Truck Transit Parks (TTPs)  across the country.

    The ICDs are ports of origin for exports and imports for ease transportation of cargo to the hinterland and landlocked neighbouring countries through adequate funding.

    Also, the establishment of the TTPs also needs to be financed adequately since road transport accounts for over 90 per cent of all freight and passengers’ movement in the country.

    Shippers Council, the vice president said, deserved commendation because adequate financing and development of the ICDs and TTPs have the potential of creating employment for many Nigerians and  boost the nation’s economy.

    Speaking at a Break Fast Meeting organised by the Nigerian Shippers Council in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Transportation in Lagos yesterday,  the Vice-President,  who was represented by his Special Assistant on Infrastructure Kolade  Shofola,  said adequate funding and development of the ICDs and TTPs would aid rapid economic growth.

    The theme of the event is : Financing Transport Infrastructure Inland Dry Ports and Truck Transit Parks.

    The Federal Government, Prof Osinbajo said, is determined to create conducive environment for business to thrive, urging local and foreign investors  to tap into ICDs and TTPs financing.

  • Green card: Soyinka to visit America

    Green card: Soyinka to visit America

    Less than a year after he turned his back on the United States of America over the emergence of Donald Trump as President, Prof Wole Soyinka is to visit America to deliver a lecture.

    The respected playwright and poet had last year torn his Green Card in protest against the victory of Trump who had defeated the widely favoured Hillary Clinton.

    The Nobel laureate will be delivering the Richard D. Cohen Lectures at Harvard University Centre for African Studies from November 14 to November 16.

    Soyinka had in an interview with Financial Times of London published at the weekend said, “I’ll go in as an alien, an alien from outer space. I love that designation,” The lectures will be in three parts, under the theme: ‘BEYOND AESTHETICS: Use, Abuse and Dissonance in African Art Traditions’.

    The first part, The Acquisitive Eye: ‘Oga, I swear its Original Fake’ will be delivered on November14.

    On November 15, Soyinka will speak on: ‘Heirs to the Procreative Deities – the Yoruba at Large’. The talks end on Thursday November 16 with the third lecture: From Aso Ebi to NYWOOD.

    The venue for the three lectures is Thompson Room, Barker Center, 12, Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA. Richard Cohen lectures.

    Before Trump became president, Soyinka had spent much time in the US, where he taught at a number of universities and lived in California with his wife, Folake.

    “My life has been involved with the Diaspora on a very personal and visceral level,” he said of his interaction with prominent African-Americans.

    Donald Trump’s election marked an end to his US sojourn. In what has become known among Nigerians as “Wolexit”, when he dropped his Green Card.

    “To have some redneck ride into power on the steed of racism was for me too much,” he told the Financial Times.

    In a statement in 2016, he had stated why he chose to drop the Green Card. According to him”I was in New York during the run-up to elections. I watched this face, its body language, listened to his uncouth, racist language, his imbecilic harangues, the insults to other peoples, other races, especially the Hispanics, Africans and Afro-Americans, even citing once – I was told – Nigeria as an instance of the burdensome occupation of global space. I watched and listened, disbelievingly, since this was America, supposedly now freed to a large extent – as we like to believe and have a right to expect – from its lamentable history of racism.”

     

  • Amaechi, Dangote, Soyinka, others for transportation roundtable

    Amaechi, Dangote, Soyinka, others for transportation roundtable

    The Federal Ministry of Transportation plans to hold a roundtable aimed at bridging the infrastructural gap in the transport sector.

    The meeting will hold on November 9, in Lagos. It is expected to have as key participants, the Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, business mogul Aliko Dangote, and Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka.

    Others expected at the meeting are stakeholders in the transportation sector, captains of industry, the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development (EBID), AFRICEXIM Bank, and top government functionaries.

    The organisers of the roundtable, Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC), said the meeting that meering would enable relevant stakeholders brainstorm on ways to address the infrastructure deficit in the transport sector and, decongesting the seaports by ensuring the smooth take off of the Inland Container Depots (ICDs).

    The roundtable is also aimed at fine tuning arrangements for the establishment of Truck Transit Parks (TTP) to provide short-term resting place for truck drivers on long distance travels and reduce loss to life and cargo caused by accidents arising from fatigue.

    A statement by the Council’s Head of Special Duties, Ignatius Nweke, said the Minister of Transportation would be the Chief Host at the event and would lead discussions on funding for the Inland Container Depots (ICDs) and the Truck Transit Parks (TTP).

    “The roundtable will parade key transport industry stakeholders, Captains of Industry, notable among them, World’s richest black man and President of the Dangote Group and Abdulsamad Rabiu of the BUA Group.

    “It is primarily intended to engage leading investments and development companies and banks like the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development (EBID), AFRICEXIM Bank and many other investors to bring in their resources and invest in these viable projects that would bring good returns within a short period of time,” Nweke said.

    He said Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka; Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), Mr. Oscar Onyema and Director General of the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC), Engr. Chidi Izuwah will be keynote speakers at the event.

    Nweke explained that while Inland Container Depots (ICDs) otherwise referred to as Dry Ports operate as centres for transshipment of sea cargo to inland destinations, Truck Transit Parks (TTPs) are places for short-term breaks and also long-term parking services where truck drivers can get fuel, food, restrooms, shower and basic supplies like oil and spare parts as well as servicing and repairs of haulage vehicles.

    He said the roundtable will among other things, deliberate on how to consolidate on the success recorded with the (ICDs), upon the completion of the Kaduna Dry Port.

    According to him, the roundtable will equally discuss the market analysis that has already been conducted as well as how the business and operating model can address the supply gap for a modern TTPs.

    “Feasibility studies has been conducted for the establishment of the Truck Transit Parks in Lokoja ( Kogi State); Obollo-Afor (Enugu State); Jebba (Kwara State); Ore (Ondo State) ; Ogere (Ogun State); Porto Novo Creek (Lagos state); Onitsha (Anambra State) and Mararaban Jos (Kaduna State),” he said.

    The statement said the Truck Transit Parks will have; gas station, hotel and motel, restaurants, mechanic workshop, fire station, police post, and automated cargo tracking system.