After dwelling exhaustively and incisively on the politics of WS as depicted through his literary works, Professor Tunde Adeniran in other sections of the book focuses among others on associations as vehicles for the pursuit of Soyinka’s political goals, politics as a means of public service for the laureate as well as the episodes of crusading activism that routinely characterize his politics. Adeniran interrogates the tension between the characterization of Soyinka’s politics as highly individualistic and exemplifying personal acts of daring heroism and the numerous examples of the writer acting through associations of varying degrees of structural formalism or hierarchical rigidity to achieve set goals.
Adeniran quotes the author’s late close friend and contemporary , Bola Ige, as averring that “He is an iconoclast…Wole is passionately patriotic but does his things his own way. He would take on a cause that he considered just and pursue it to any extent without caring whether you are with him or not”. He continues, “Yemi Ogunbiyi’s assessment of Wole Soyinka was similar to this, but he went further to assert that Soyinka was incapable of collective actions, illustrating with specific examples and with reference to his work that projects individual heroes or the heroic acts of some individuals”. And for another close friend of Soyinka, the late eminent economist, Professor Ojetunji Aboyade, he classifies the playwright “as an idea rather than an organization man”.
Adeniran deftly summarizes and synthesizes these perspectives and it is difficult to disagree with his submission that “The greater percentage of Soyinka’s work certainly puts some emphasis on heroes and heroic acts but he has also shown persistent interest in organization, in the establishment of actualizing some political ideas. We do not wish to confirm or contest the validity of the view that his works reflect his personal choice, but an examination of the use to which Soyinka has put associations is vital to a fuller understanding of his own politics”.
As Adeniran had noted in his reflections on Soyinka’s early years, the playwright’s political consciousness was partly nurtured and shaped by his close observation as a child of the Egba
women organize and mobilize for rebellion against perceived injustices of the colonial and traditional authorities. The importance of efficient and effective organization in the attainment of set political goals could thus not have been lost on WS as he evolved both in chronological age and politically.
It is pertinent to note in this regard that as a young undergraduate at the then University College, Ibadan, Soyinka inspired the formation of the Pirates Confraternity as an unorthodox association of students to fight against the stifling conventionalism, hypocrisy and colonial mentality prevalent on the campus at the time. The Pirates noted for their patriotic outlook, nationalist inclination, discipline and high ethical standards have survived the decades with their foundational values largely intact even when the idea of student confraternities has been substantially abused and perverted through the formation of what have been described as secret cults across institutions without the moral and philosophical motivations that undergirded the associational aspirations and value orientations of the pirates.
Despite some of his political interventions that seem reflective of daring acts of individual heroism such as his ‘invasion’ of the premises of the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Corporation and replacing at gun point a recorded broadcast of his own for that of the much despised SLA Akintola administration which had mindlessly rigged the Western Regional elections, WS was certainly not acting as a sole Rambo Superman. Rather, in that and other acts of audacious resistance to the creeping fascism that had led to widespread anarchy in the West, in which Soyinka was a leading actor, he was always supported by a close knit circle of associates and collaborators who shared his political values and enjoyed his absolute trust.
In organizing to resist and thwart the unhidden determination of Akintola’s unpopular Nigerian National Democratic Party (NNDP) to rig the 1965 Western Regional elections irrespective of the will of the people, Adeniran writes that “Returning from the Commonwealth Arts Festival in Dakar to meet this situation, Soyinka who by then had changed base from the University of Ife to the University of Lagos, put an ad hoc group together to counter the plan or resist the dangerous imposition. He moved temporarily to Ibadan which was the main theatre of action and linked up with all categories of operatives (the police, telephone operators in different locations etc) which could facilitate the effectiveness of his group that comprised of individuals who distrusted politicians and their contrivances, and abhorred the NNDP in particular for all it stood for”.
Adeniran cites some of the associational groups with which Soyinka was involved at various times to achieve specific political goals to include the ‘Third Force’ conceived to oppose the two belligerent sides during the Nigerian civil war and come up with an alternative plan to avert war and unite the nation; the Organization for Solidarity, Home and Abroad (OSHA), to demonstrate against the visit of then Head of State, to Great Britain in June 1973; the African Democratic League (ADL) established to promote political values or the Socialist Action Black Africa (SABA) created and nurtured in the early seventies to promote the political interests of Africa and the continent’s wellbeing.
It is difficult to pigeonhole Soyinka in terms of the character and color of his politics which is why those who seek to taint him pejoratively as politically partisan are too often well off the mark and their efforts hardly credible. Soyinka’s politics is more pragmatic than ideologically doctrinaire. Though fully supportive of the 1964 national workers strike, for example, Adeniran writes that he was exasperated by leading Labour leaders “who maintained that bourgeois Nigeria had not attained the level of economic transformation that would make a take-over by the proletariat inevitable”. Soyinka’s response to those who argued this way was that “…You are text-bound…You ignore the special conditions of our post-colonial society; this is one revolution that will skip the bourgeois phase, and the moment is now, while the post-colonial order is not firmly entrenched, the power structure feeble, and mass discontent at its highest since independence”.
Soyinka has been one of the most trenchant and acerbic critics of military rule in post-colonial Nigeria. Yet, he was known to be a close confidante of the former military governor of the Western Region after the January, 1966 coup, Colonel Adekunle Fajuyi, who was known to have progressive and enlightened inclinations. Again, he agreed to serve as the founding Chairman of the Federal Road Safety Corp (FRSC) under the General Ibrahim Babangida regime and utilized the opportunity to establish the corp as one of the most efficient, effective, disciplined, and productive public sector organizations in Nigeria. He threw all his energies and talents into his passion for drastically reducing the horrendous scale of deaths on our highways even though he voluntarily opted not to collect any salaries or allowances.
Yet, once Babangida annulled the results of the June 12, 1993, presidential elections described as the freest and fairest in the country’s history and won by Chief MKO Abiola, thus effectively torpedoing the transition to democracy, Soyinka became one of the most vehement and uncompromising critics of the annulment and also of continued military dictatorship. From exile into which he had to flee from the hounding goons of General Sani Abacha, Soyinka deployed his immense intellect, moral integrity, and global goodwill at the forefront of the struggle to dislodge military rule and help restore democratic governance in Nigeria.
Even though he was an ardent admirer of the great sage and unparalleled developmental and transformational leader, Chief Obafemi Awolowo, Soyinka never joined any of the parties formed by the latter. Rather, in the Second Republic, for instance, he along with his compatriot and contemporary, Chinua Achebe, opted to join Mallam Aminu Kano’s Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) which had the most radical manifesto of the five registered political parties of the period. As we continue to celebrate WS’s epochal life at 90, Professor Tunde Adeniran’s reflections on his politics and the associated themes of power, justice, liberty, human rights, and dignity as well as social equity and the rule of law that characterize Soyinka’s thought, will surely offer rewarding and emancipatory reading.
