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Tag: Wole Soyinka

  • Soyinka: Biafran memory of Asaba

    Soyinka: Biafran memory of Asaba

    In his last important work, Chinua Achebe offered his own description of the human debacle which characterized the prosecution of the Nigerian Civil War. In his inimitable pungency the grandmaster observed that more firearms were deployed than the total supply used by the Axis and Allied Forces during the Second World War! On page 170 of There Was A Country, Achebe stated that “the Nigeria – Biafra conflict created a human emergency of epic proportions” with  millions flooding the deplorable camps, “epidemic ridden grave yards, where shortages of supplies, poor sanitation created a bitter cocktail of despair, giving rise to social pathological and psychological traumas.”

    Through those cruel trench exchanges, cold-blooded massacres and through the trauma of parents’ watching helplessly, the final seconds of their children starving to death, the Biafran granite resistance remained stoic and stubborn. Of all the colossal losses suffered by both sides, there were few exceptional calamities. For the federal Second Division, the Abagana Fiasco, and the disastrous Niger crossing from Asaba, was like the Oguta and the Owerri final offensive of the Third Commando Division, landmark reverses which at the end of the day, returned the initiative to the desperate secessionists.

    On the Biafran side, the stop at Ore; the poisoning and the consequent wipe-out of the Biafran Expeditionary Army by their Bini hostesses; the loss of the entire Midwest; the fall of Port Harcourt and its refinery; the loss of Azumiri, Egbema, Ohaji, Uzuakoli and for that matter the Biafran food basket axis of Ngwa land, Akwette, Aba etc, were heavy reverses that were never contained till the bitter end.

    As the Biafrans took more punishment, the death on July 29, 1967 at Obollo Ofor of the charismatic Major C.K. Nzeogwu almost brought the war to an early end. In our exclusive chronicle of the last hours of Kaduna Nzeogwu (See pp 45, Blood On The Niger), we noted that the immediate impact of Nzeogwu’s death was devastating across the lines. His death led to the emotional loss of Opi junction, which as he had predicted, led to the eventual loss of the war. He had advised Ojukwu not to declare secession as that would pull the OAU to the federal side. His death diminished the potentials of organizing a southern command in tandem and his trusted lieutenants, Majors Obasanjo, Ogbemudia, Atom Kpera abandoned their neutral stand and went full circle carrying the federal flag to war.

    In his own battlefield testimony, former Press Secretary to the Head of State and Daily Times War Correspondent, David Attah stated in the Sunday Sun, January 22, 2011, that,…”When Major C.K Nzeogwu was killed, the wailing of the Nigerian officers shocked me. An enemy officer was killed and I could not believe their tears. They had lost a comrade-in-arms, a man who believed very much in the Nigerian Revolution.” On the orders of the Federal Commander, Nzeogwu was buried in Kaduna with full military honours.

    Colonel Charlie Archibong was the lead Commander at Ore ahead of the invading Biafran forces that struck the Mid West, August 9, 1967. He had His Excellency’s special Orders to blitz through the West and sack Dodan Barracks in 48 hours! He was ordered to stop and from Ore the Brigadier Banjo’s inexplicable Retreat Orders led to the federal recapture of the Midwest. Charlie Archibong was to see more action at Ikot Ekpene and after one of those his risky officer-led Recce operations, his command headquarters waited in vain for his return. A federal well organized ambush had spotted the Biafran officer, ensnared and trapped him into a double obstacle. In the mad rush to recover his body, the Biafrans lost the strategic Ikot Ekpene town and the entire sector.  No other Biafran officer apart from Col. Nsudo also from Akwa Ibom, fought the war with such incomparable zeal, sacrifices as Charlie Bazooka!

    Another heart breaker for Biafra came with the shocking news of the death of Major Adaka Boro. Like in the ironic case of Major Kaduna Nzeogwu, both friends and foes cried at his funeral. General Alabi Isama in his book went further to produce the photograph of the Biafran straggler who shot the Major at the Port-Harcourt sector of the war. Adaka Boro’s death put Biafra in mourning as most of the Biafra field commanders were followers of Boro. Issac Boro was many things to many people, but as the President, University of Nigeria, Students Union, in the early ‘60s, he was the epitome of the golden age of Nigerian student revolution. At Nsukka, he had a covenant with his disciples. They communicated in special languages and codes. These subalterns were his followers and the first to volunteer service into the Officer Corps Regiment that bore the brunt of the war. They did not question the leader when he declared the KIAMA philosophy and were not in any position to question his decision to join the federal forces. His death was a shock and like loyal officers they fanned out from their bush locations to salute the fall of a fine officer.

    While the Biafrans were able to return to their trenches after the funeral rites of those officers, they were in inconsolable grief on learning of the death of the Nigeria’s Paragon of Integrity,  Crusader against Genocide and Africa’s Leading Voice against man’s Inhumanity to Man.

    At the 2010 Harvard International Conference celebrating the works of Christopher Okigbo, Achebe with Professor Soyinka sitting beside him, once more, recalled the reaction of the people of the Sun to the sad news of the ‘death” of the activist. “We learnt that our friend and dissident, Professor Wole Soyinka had died in prison custody… the whole enclave erupted in solidarity and a new energy and a Spartan resolve to fight to the finish was unleashed”.

    And for the Biafran memories, Professor Wole Soyinka was the first courageous voice to relate the gruesome death of King’s College handsome Alumnus, Gogo Nzeribe. When the man Died, Gogo was bound hands and feet by Captain Bulala Tarfa and fed for days to cockroaches in Kirikiri Prisons. When nobody had the balls, he was the lone voice right there in prison custody who told the world about Asaba.

    “A Corporal had shot 13 detainees in Asaba in cold blood. A young Yoruba boy admitted shooting them. He said they were talking in Igbo and he had ordered them to speak English. He decided that they were plotting something so he turned his machine gun on them. He was released two days ago and re-assigned to a new Division by the Office of the Chief of Staff. Then I asked why….it is only part of the same extermination process. It has been bred in them. A free for all epidemic. That young man had done his bit, he is set free”.

  • Theatrics as TFTperforms  The Lion and The Jewel 

    Theatrics as TFTperforms  The Lion and The Jewel 

    To mark Prof Wole Soyinka 80th Birthday, between July and August, The Thespian Family Theatre and Productions is performing two of his plays. The troupe promises a show like no other, writes Paul Ade-Adeleye.

    for the more theatre-oriented, the word ‘performance’ would immediately spawn erect ears and faster heart beats. Such was the anticipation when it was announced that to celebrate the 80th birthday of Prof Wole Soyinka, Nigeria’s only Nobel Laureate, The Thespian Family Theatre and Productions, an independent theatre troupe, will be performing two of his plays – The Lion and the Jewel, and The Trials of Brother Jero – between July and Saturday, August 30. As all theatre troupes do, the troupe promised to bring the show to you as never before.

    Punctual as a clock, the writer was at the venue, Freedom Park, CMS, Lagos, and strolled to the enclosure demarcated for the performance itself. Expecting to find an enclosure fully designed to look like a hall and eliminate all appearances of an open-air theatre, he was taken aback and sent a-pondering to find that the only things covered were the seats for audience and the stage itself. Wondering if this was in fact, a keeping to Soyinka’s depiction of indigenousness prevailing over western tradition, for traditional African theatre was usually an open air affair, he settled to watch the performance.

    Predictably, the play did not start at the appointed time, and there might have been many reasons for this. First, the auditorium was still as devoid of spectators as a baboon’s backside is devoid of hair. It could also have been that the producers were stylishly waiting for the audience to fill up. This situation proved that theatre in Nigeria is fast going out of favour because movie premieres at cinemas seem to pull a more punctual and populous audience.

    The play itself proved to be an eyeful. The director, Mr Toyin Osinaike apparently knew what he was on about as his artistic pyrotechnics reverberated from one end of the stage to the other, from the opening glee to the curtain call. As is well known among theatre practitioners, the course of a performance is usually determined by the opening moments; Mr Osinaike therefore, lived up to his name by ensuring that the opening glee was fast paced and exhilarating, even so that an itinerant photographer – obviously blown away by the dexterous display of dancing feet and drumming women as depicted in the glee – unwittingly abandoned his job in favour of greedily feasting his eyes on the sequences breezing by in rapid succession on stage. Not that one can blame him though; anyone with a good eye would have done likewise.

    Written by Prof Soyinka, The Lion and the Jewel depicts an outlandish school teacher, Lakunle, who is brains deep in love with Sidi, a village girl of Hellenic beauty. He wants to marry her, and would have successfully done so had he not been averse to the idea of paying her bride price. This may be as a result of his less-than-attractive financial situation, or his damning indoctrination in western philosophies, but whichever it is; Sidi will not marry him without a bride price and she even calls him miserly. A photographer has come to the village earlier and, bewitched by her beauty, has taken pictures of her and published them in a magazine. Baroka, the village head and unmitigated adversary of modernity has also seen the pictures, and like the biblical devil, who as a roaring lion, prowls around, seeking whom he may devour; begins to desire her for a wife. In the dark recesses of his mind, he hatches an evil plan; lies to his blabber-mouthed wife that he has lost his potency, and, as expected, she gossips this information with Sidi. Inordinately eager to spite Baroka, who she has erstwhile seen as a living god, she goes to seduce him so she can mock him when he cannot perform basic manly duties, but things go awry as she did not go with a long spoon to dine with the devil. Ultimately, the old rogue has a go at her and that proves to be enough to make Sidi a believer of his. She promptly heads home, bids Lakunle a cold farewell, and packs off to be a new bride in Baroka’s harem.

    Under Mr Osinaike’s direction, the first scene took off with a commendable effort to keep up the pace, which the performers had built already from the glee. Mr Patrick Diabuah, the individual who played Lakunle, a character Soyinka most artfully created, must have known he had a lot of work, and he pulled off quite an exciting performance, although a few glitches were to be noted. First, perhaps in his keenness to sustain the pace and obey the basic principles of acting comedies, he began to move and render lines faster than was required. In fact, he seemed to be acting in a dimension operating at a faster frequency than the audience, but being a ready performer, he must have noticed this himself, and, in an impressive display of theatrical flexibility, quickly recovered himself and soon began to draw chuckles from the audience.

    Now, whether by the director’s design or by the actor’s fate, he breezed around the stage again at the appearance of the village belle, Sidi, played by the comely Ijeoma Aniebu whose affecting beauty may have driven even a garden slug to feats of Olympian proportions, and, at the sequence where he was to collect her pail and ‘uncannily’ spill some water on himself, he gave himself a quick bath, and subsequently nearly flooded the stage floor. This proved to be a misfortunate occurrence as he was soon clumsily slipping up and down the stage, whereas he was supposed to be breezing around with grace. To pay for this water spill later on were a couple of dancers who either by design or by fate was left sprawling on the floor during a mimicry dance.

    Miss Aniebu, who played Sidi, also did justice to the character as she coyly swung her hips about; the effect of course was acted or genuine amorous displays of affection from either Mr Diabuah or Lakunle. One thing though, stood in her way – audibility. Her voice was not the loud type and despite her efforts at vocal projection, the writer still had to pay very keen attention to hear her quite clearly.

    While this did not slow down the pace; the director, who had every intention of justifying the amount charged for the performance, proceeded to attack the crowd scene where a chorus of vociferous townspeople were supposed to be singing and miming, and the performance seemed to be all roses and daisies until the entrance of Baroka, played by Mr Sobifaa Dokubo. The thing about this bit of the performance is that it was to say the very least, below relative par with what had erstwhile constituted the performance. The aforementioned actor is one who is said to have worked with the Nigerian Thespis himself, Chief Hubert Ogunde, and his theatrical feats have also kept not a few people enthralled. Alas, whether due to advance in age or by an ill turn of events in his career, his performance was arguably the chink in the armour that was the performance as a whole. The writer began to wonder if the veteran actor was a regular at rehearsals, and if he was, whether the director devoted enough time to personally work on him as every good director should. From his initial utterance to his ultimate action, Mr Dokubo seemed out of place with a character he was meant to be engrossed in. He fumbled for his lines as was noticeable by anyone who had read the play, and at a point simply began to render lines to the detriment of his acting. This was made even more glaring when one of the scenes that should have revealed his theatrical prowess, the armpit-hair-being-plucked scene, was thrown away once more as it lacked the proper comic elements to bring it to life – fast pace, classy acting bordering on melodrama and farce, infusions of slapstick to maintain consistency with the opening sequences, and last but most importantly, interaction with the audience. Mr Dokubo threw all these to the winds, and may have been undone had Sadiku, played by the skilled Mrs Lara Akinsola, not come to save the scene. She apparently knew what she was on about as she threw some life into the scene.

    At the close of the second scene, it became apparent that what would prove to be the performance’s Damoclean sword was the scene where Baroka would have to wilily lure Sidi to bed. So far, Mr Dokubo’s acting had not justified the appellation ‘Fox of the Undergrowth’, and Sidi had not yet come up with a trick to boost her projection. If both performers were left alone on stage together, it would require effusive thespian miracles to keep the play alive. The miracle was never to be as the sword soon dropped at the commencement of the said scene, and to prove this point, a quick glance round the audience in the middle of the scene revealed the tell-tale signs of a borderline blasé audience – mass usages of phones, and, even the photographer slowly came to life like a flower in the sun, except he was less graceful about it for he soon conceived it in his camera to impede the writer’s vision and concentration with his beefy frame and noisome clicks.

    To give the devil his well-deserved due, Mr Dokubo displayed remarkable presence of mind throughout. Any performer acting like he was on stage would have known he was facing imminent perdition and would have cracked open like a nut in a squirrel’s paws. Alas, he kept his act together, and by bumbling and fumbling pulled it through to the very end without falling apart, or if he did, he did an exceedingly commendable job hiding it from the writer’s searching eyes.

    Soon enough, the writer was salvaged from the hell of a graceless photographer and a bumbling actor with the reappearance of Lakunle and Sadiku towards the end of the play as they kicked up the action again, and, Sidi’s significant selection of Baroka, the action conveying the ultimate thematic preoccupation of the play, was well managed by the director whose job had thus far been commendable. He proved a ready manager as the crowd scene was well controlled with significant dances and pantomimes which hit the nail on the head as far as the subject matters of the play were concerned. Alas, he may have been a bit too industrious while depicting Lakunle finding some fun at the end with a young girl. Now, Professor Soyinka wrote it as such, but he never portrayed Lakunle speaking Yoruba at any point in the play and Mr Patrick, while playing Lakunle, at the final scene spoke Yoruba to a young lassie who had caught his eye earlier; a very significant turn of events which tampered with Soyinka’s depiction of western culture through the character of Lakunle.

    Finally, the managers of the production seemed to need some schooling on how to choose locations for theatre performances and I would recommend that they read up Stephen Langley’s works before choosing Freedom Park for any play again. Their decision seemed to the writer to have hampered the director’s work as he had to move the orchestra into the audience in a play that was not Brechtian. Not only that, they also sent Miss Ijeoma to the guillotine as she had to talk her throat out in an open-air theatre with heavy winds blowing and a mild rain falling.  To the Thespian Family Theatre, in the words of Ola Rotimi, if drama be the food of life, act on.

     

     

    • Ade-Adeleye is of the Department of English and Literary Studies, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Osun State. 
  • Soyinka: The Man Lived

    Soyinka: The Man Lived

    Language, the source of Wole Soyinka’s fame; the reason also for his alienation by the average reader. The Nobel Laureate is a man of complex locution. Besides his political forays, the density and immensity of his literature is perhaps the major thing that trademarks him. The fact is, there can be no indolent or perfunctory reading of Wole Soyinka; his literary rampart is impregnable. You peruse him; then the fortress can give way.

    However, the language employed by the playwright in his prison memoir is in a class of its own. Set in the Civil War Nigeria, The Man Died is a riveting account of the atrocities perpetrated by the military regime against the civil populace, in which the author was also a major victim – of solitary confinement without trial for fifteen gruelling months. The abuses fill you with horrors: the flogging syndrome, detention and imprisonment without trial, killing, torture as pastime; sadism and crushing of the civic will; the climate of appeasement against the rule of law, etc.

    His critics believe that language and power cannot be placed on the same pedestal. The former must defer to the latter. Language, in all its ramifications, must kowtow to power, however malevolent is the latter. But the human rights activist disagrees, “When power is placed in the service of a vicious reaction, a language must be called into being which does its best to appropriate such obscenity of power and fling its excesses back in its face.”

    The author argues that language is a part of resistance therapy. It must be employed to liberate enslaved public psyche. Those who raise eyebrows on the mode of The Man Died but are silent on the evils that provoked the choice of words do so probably for want of bravery or acquiescence in the unassailability of power, even at its most cynical and tyrannical. “Such criticism,” according to Soyinka, “must begin by assailing the seething compost of inhuman abuses from which such language took its being, then its conclusions would be worthy of notice. When it fails to do so, all we are left with is, yet again, the collaborative face of intellectualism with power – that is, the taking of power and its excesses as the natural condition, in relation to which even language must be accountable.”

    The Man Died interrogates the silence of the intelligentsia in the face of horrendous human rights abuses, accusing it of criminal complicity through conduct and warning that “the boundaries of the geography of victims of (power) eventually extends to embrace even those who think they are protected by silence.” The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny. In any people that submit willingly to the ‘daily humiliation of fear’, the man dies.

    While in Ikoyi Prisons, as a prisoner of conscience, the author saw and heard the accounts of the victims of the Gestapo. The Black Hole in Dodan Barracks; the torture and flogging syndrome by soldiers. The picture of sadists who dined and wined and lulled themselves to sleep with the sounds of the tortured was grim and stupefying. Here is a narration of the writer-activist about one of the casualties of the flogging syndrome.

    “I went and looked at a back of purulent sores. There was no skin. None at all. It was a mass of sores which no longer had definition as each weal had merged into another… My mind returned to the back I had seen, the still suppurating furrows, dark raised permanent swellings, the potholes where the tip of the whip must have dug more than once. A few scabs that seemed an inch thick. And his neck, even to the base of the head, covered in weals.”

    “They were flogged in the open, you said.”

    “Yes.”

    “And they screamed?… But Gowon lives in those barracks. He must have heard the screams.”

    Agu said, “Frankly, I don’t think he knew. He lived far away from the guardroom.”

    “Those screams must have penetrated concrete.”

    Often, the offences ranged from being from a particular tribe, to a section of the country, to being in their company, a mild protest at injustice, to what was considered a slight. It was an era of lawlessness… Journalists are usually the first victims of any dictatorship – Segun Sowemimo eventually died as a result of having been “brutally beaten, he and other colleagues, by soldiers on the orders of a Military Governor.” “These soldiers plunder such commodities as palm wine and even food-stuffs from the pedestrians and cyclists as they pass through the check-points.”  “We recall that some time ago… a federal officer on duty in Calabar was similarly flogged and his hair scraped before he escaped to Lagos.”

    Soyinka himself was framed, said to have confessed to “an arrangement with Mr Ojukwu to assist in the purchase of jet aircraft to be used by the rebel Air Force”, and was later said to have admitted “he had since changed his mind.” He was also said to have agreed with Victor Banjo “to help in the overthrow of the Government of Western Nigeria. Soyinka further agreed to the consequent overthrow of the Federal Military Government.” But the radical was not put on trial. Although there did exist a Third Force, Soyinka had confessed nothing to anyone. “I was framed and nearly liquidated because of my activities inside prison. From Kirikiri I wrote and smuggled out a letter setting out the latest proof of the genocidal policies of the government of Gowon. It was betrayed to the guilty men…” Soyinka believes that “a commitment to absolute ideals cannot plead the excuse of immobilization to turn his back on the fight for an equitable society.” One of the government goons among the academic staff in Ibadan got to know about the letter “made a photostat, and dutifully passed it on to his military bosses.” That was the turning-point in the incarceration of the human rights campaigner and the horrendous sufferings that were to be his lot.

    But The Man Lived despite the plot to annihilate him. The machination: “They argued that the public would believe their prepared story which was: while being flown to Jos, I pulled out a gun, tried to take over the plane and was shot in the attempt. A violent man meets a violent end; the dramatist over-dramatizes himself once too often.”

    I agree the story would have been believed. Soyinka’s past in holding up the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service at gun-point in 1965 would have stood against him in the court of public opinion. He was alerted, hence his attempt to stymie the scheme through an orchestrated riot at Ikoyi prison on the D-day. Smarting from the failed evil plot to eliminate the gadfly, he was transferred to the Maximum Security Prison and manacled twenty-four hours a day. Public humiliation was to follow. Another forgery announced that Soyinka had been caught ‘skulking along the wall’ in an attempt to escape from prison!

    The revolutionary was to lament later that he should have indeed escaped! “I fault myself now…recognising that since I had settled within myself all doubts about the bankruptcy of Gowon’s moral order from that moment of his release of the two murderers, it was not enough to send word to a band of emasculated intellectuals. I should have done then what I now stand accused of doing – escaped.”

    In spite of his embittered articles in the press condemning the carnage perpetrated or condoned by the Federal Military Government, Soyinka was never under any illusion about the futility of secession, in a context. The loss of his excitable friend, Christopher Okigbo, in defence of boundary was sobering enough. “It is better to believe in people than nations… And any exercise of self-decimation sorely in defence of the inviolability of the temporal demarcations called nations is a mindless travesty of idealism. Peoples are not temporal because they can be defined by infinite ideas. Boundaries cannot.” The revolutionary never saw hope in Enugu nor Lagos. So also were Alale and Banjo. It is better to defend humanity, ideals than boundaries. The trio were united on this score: Esta tierra/ Este aire/ Este cielo/ Son los nuestros/ Defenderemos – those lines by Castro – This earth is ours/ And the air/ And the sky/ We will defend them. “In defence of that earth, that air and sky which formed our vision beyond lines drawn by masters from a colonial past or redrawn by the instinctive rage of the violated we set out, each to a different destiny.” A melancholic peroration indeed by the poet: Banjo, Alale to the firing squad, Soyinka to prison…

    The book features also the exuberance and excesses of Gowon. On that former, I have always argued, could be located the immediate reason that led to the Civil War. I refer to the youthfulness of some of the gladiators. Gowon, 32; Ojukwu, 33; Danjuma, 28; Katsina, 33; etc. Where is age? Where is experience?  Some of them were not even married as at the time they held the most important posts in the nation. The fratricidal war, I humbly submit, is, also, a price the nation paid for youthful exuberance.

    The encounters of WS with Col. Fajuyi, his philosophy, the complicity of the judiciary in the crisis of the West, especially their last tete-a-tete three days before he met his untimely death… are all absorbing.

    To suggest that Soyinka suffered in prison is to detract from what he went through in solitary confinement. No word can describe the tedium of solitary confinement, especially as a prisoner of conscience. He tried to make the most of it within the limits of human endurance.  Even death would have been a triumph at a point, as he became a living skeleton. His will was stretched but not broken. It is to his eternal credit that he never accepted a life under an insupportable system as a substitute for his freedom. Unknown to many, every dictator, military or civilian, since then, factors in Soyinka in all they do or fail to do.

    The book also leads us to the belief-world of the poet. Apart from his position as relates to God, which is widely known, it is plausible to say that the burden of loneliness led to some other discoveries. “Creation,” he says, “is admission of great loneliness. The mind is time – and on that flash he rested now the problem of Infinity at last. The mind is sole coefficient of time and space.”

    An academic of distinction, Soyinka’s description of the life of insects and animals, in their ecological splendour, within the prison wall in Kaduna, is superb. One must praise him for having the vocabulary to do all that – a register of some sort for school children.

    In summary, the book reveals the tribulations that are sometimes the lot of those ‘who are allied and committed to the unfettered principle of life’, for which Soyinka is a living example. His public spiritedness is exceptional. He deserves all the accolades, the encomiums we shower on him on the occasion of his 80th birthday.

    The Man Died in the contemporary Nigeria, what lessons? First, we say ‘never again’ to military rule. It is a curse for any people created by the Almighty to be ruled by guns. In the contemporary world, military rule is tantamount to terrorism because what it seeks to do is to drive fear into the populace as a prelude to domination. The military, as it is the practice in developed climes, must subordinate itself to all civil authorities. The army must never be used for political ends by the President.  The misuse of the police and armed forces in 1964/65 elections by the powers that be played a major role in the incursion of the military into governance and the attendant wanton depradations. The rule of law must become an article of faith, any infraction attracting condign sanctions from a truly independent and apolitical judiciary. No one should ever keep quiet in the face of injustice or tyranny. The police and military must obey only orders that are legal and constitutional. Neither race, tribe, colour nor religion should henceforth define our lives but the content of our character. Those in power must be committed to the welfare of the citizens.

    Congratulations to my intellectual avatar, Wole Soyinka, on this grand, momentous occasion of his 80th birthday.

     

    Soyombo, a media practitioner, sent this piece via densityshow@yahoo.com

     

  • Wole Soyinka’s white hairs

    Wole Soyinka’s white hairs

    Winston Churchill once expressed his frustration about Russia in an often quoted statement: ‘It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.’ It is easy for me to re-contextualise that statement as a linguistic ode to the greatness of Professor Wole Soyinka. On this occasion, I employ that statement as a critical challenge to all Nigerians about our ethical and political duty to unravel the significance of WS before he ceases to be among us.

    I want to call to our minds Prof. Soyinka’s poem humorous ‘To My First White Hairs.’ Written when WS noticed the first three strands of grey hair invading his dark and bushy hair, he was alerted to his own metamorphosis, and the need to forecast the time while we still have the chance.

    THREE WHITE HAIRS! frail invaders of undergrowth interpret time. I view them, wired wisps, vibrant coiled beneath a magnifying glass, milk-thread presages Of the hoary phase.

    Like WS’s three white hairs, we have also arrived at a defining moment when we can no longer ignore what Soyinka portends for the task and responsibility of nation building in Nigeria. Soyinka’s greatness consists especially in embodying the Nigerian Project in his personal and literary evolution as a scholar and social activist. His classic prison memoir, The Man Died, represents one of my initial introductions to the problems with Nigeria. When I first met Kongi 48 years ago, it was at Aáwé when he visited in company of Prof. Ojetunji Aboyade (whose family house adjoined the Olaopa’s). Their visit was usually in the company of Akin Mabogunje, Femi Johnson, Allison Ayida, Michael Omolayole, and so on. I remember vividly the task assigned to me of bringing the inevitable kegs of palm-wine from Oje’s brother.

    WS would later move from these usually seminar cum social fellowship to a larger, more vocal and more critical and literary analysis of the Nigerian predicament. He would, for instance, later bluntly challenge his generation as a wasted one which refused to deploy its social capital as a significant arsenal that confronts Nigeria with the image of its own anomie and how to wriggle out of it.

    Soyinka’s hairs are all white now; a leonine and willowy testament to the wisdom of his struggle to make us better against our own corrupt inclinations. Yet, Nigeria is still struggling (as I earlier gave expression in the article titled Generational Capital in the Nigerian Project) to turn against its own anomic existence. Reissuing his books today, especially The Man Died, has the significance of instructing my own generation against a wastefulness that comes from neglecting our own patriotic duties to Nigeria. Soyinka is still very much with us today, but have we all learned anything from the enigma? Is it not time we institutionalise his memorable insights to national rebirth and regeneration (even if we haven’t done enough to institutionalise the legend himself)?

    The hero of our time, I say Kabiyesi o, Happy Birthday, kalamu ikowe yin a di abere o – may your pen grow and grow in size to become needle.

  • WSCIJ launches project on women reportage

    WSCIJ launches project on women reportage

    THE Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism, WSCIJ, has launched the Report Women project in its bid to advocate an enhanced reportage of girls and women in the Nigerian media.

    The centre, in a press released signed by Mrs. Motunrayo Alaka, Coordinator WSCIJ, noted that the project is focusing on major issues of access and abuse, ranging from education, health care, violence and early marriage, among others.

    The project, which began since May 2014, is a collaborative initiative of the Royal Netherlands Embassy and WSCIJ, aimed at using the tool of investigative reporting to highlight these issues, as well as examining the role of religion in the girl-child and woman’s rights trajectory.

    Elaborating on the project, Alaka said, “The package is a month-long media monitoring of the reportage of girls and women in seven Nigerian newspapers.  It will continue with a meeting of stakeholders on Thursday, August 7th 2014 in Lagos. Thereafter, investigative journalism trainings aimed at honing participants’ skills on the reportage of girls and women issues will hold in Abuja, Ekiti and Cross River States, followed by the administration of small grants to shortlisted journalists to investigate and write issue-based stories on girls and women.”

    The project will also include the production of an investigative documentary, and the publication of a reporter’s resource guide on reporting girls and women. The project, which is expected to run till April 2015, will have online campaign on the centre’s social media platforms especially its twitter handle – twitter.com/wsoyinkacentre using the hashtag #reportwomen.”

     

  • Encounters with Wole Soyinka

    SIR: I ‘met’ Prof. Wole Soyinka at Queen’s School, Ede, Osun State in 1962. Our English teacher, Miss Ayanbule (now Mrs. Holloway) had told the class that she had invited a university don to talk to us on African literature. The class had received the news with the indifference that would be expected of any secondary school class. We were in for a number of surprises.

    The university don appeared not stuffed in a three piece suit as would have been the order of the day, then. He breezed into the class in his now famous mbari shirt and sandals (years later, many lecturers at several universities tried to copy this look, they could match neither his casualness nor cleanliness!!!).

    The second surprise, he spoke to us and not down at us. Finally, he read one of his poems, The Telephone Conversation to the class. Ever since that day, I have been “hooked” on the professor. I have read nearly all his works, watched most of his plays and have never missed any opportunity to listen to his public lectures.

    Between 1966-70, Prof. Soyinka was involved in raising people’s consciousness to the uselessness of Civil War. At the University of Ibadan, he gave a lecture to draw staff and students’ attention to the wastage and carnage in “Biafra”.

    At one point during this lecture, the man broke down and wept! Of course, this was most unusual where his generation must have been taught to keep the stiff upper lip. A Nigerian man, showing so much emotion in public was unheard of.

    Then I ‘met’ Prof. Soyinka many times in his autobiographical book Ake: The year of childhood. I have read this book about four times, much more recently this year. No, I am neither a student nor a teacher of English literature. I am just a compulsive reader. The book has appealed to me on three levels:

    His power of recall – there is no doubt that the man is a genius. I wonder how many of us can remember so vividly the incidents that occur in our lives at the age of three.

    The importance of nature and environment in the upbringing of a child has been brought to the very forefront in this book. Young Wole Soyinka was a mail-runner between the Egba Women – the onikaba and aroso in their struggle against the oppressive taxation system. Also, his close association with the Ramsome-Kuti was bound to make him politically conscious.

    Lastly, on a very personal level, his parents were almost representatives of many parents in that era and area. (My father was also a headmaster and mother ‘kept’ several shops) No wonder, I have had the pleasure of giving the book out as presenst to friends and relations.

    In  1989, Tunji Oyelana was celebrating his 50th birthday at his  home – Osuntokun Avenue, Bodija, Ibadan. A look into the sitting room, on the same level as the dance floor (not one of these inner sanctuaries) showed the Nobel Laureate, himself, eating eba and bush meat on the floor with a few friends. I almost turned back, I felt I was intruding. No, no I was invited back into the sitting room and the camaraderie and banter that went on can better be seen than imagined. There was so much traffic of people and he just carried on.

    My most recent encounter was at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs at the Annual Obafemi  Awolowo lecture this year. Yes. Soyinka, the man had not changed – the fire, enthusiasm, emotions, politics, humaneness, freedom fighting – everything was still intact. Except, I wondered to myself, why did he read his entire lecture. Is the man getting that old?  Now that question has been answered. In a subsequent lecture which he gave under the auspices of Oxbridge alumni association, he was so thoroughly misquoted that he had to write a rejoinder in the dailies.

    In this town when people’s preoccupation is pull him down) and at these times when there seem so many clouds in the horizon, thank God we have an excuse to celebrate our own W.S. (courtesy Yemi Ogunbiyi).

    To those of us who do not belong to the inner caucus who call him kongi, I wish to say ‘Bon Anniversaire’, Prof.

     

    • Aderonke Fetuga
  • ‘Our Girls’; WSoyinka@80; NSNC: Urgent increase life of driving licence to 5-10 years pls

    ‘Our Girls’; WSoyinka@80; NSNC: Urgent increase life of driving licence to 5-10 years pls

     

    Where are ‘Our Girls’, missing since April 15, when they were wickedly kidnapped, destroying hopes and dreams and instilling terror. The kidnapping destroyed the laughter of their families and most Nigerians.

    On Sunday  July 13,, we celebrated Nobel Laureate, theatre guru and passionate road safety maestro Professor Wole Soyinka’s 80th Birthday in the Theatre Arts Department in the University of Ibadan with a reading from Ake-The Years Of Childhood page 25, Soyinka’s first day at school at nearly three years old, which I had the honour to read-and which should be in every home as Soyinka is NOT difficult. The short extract was followed by the entertaining performance of the Wole Soyinka play Alapata Apata with Yemi Akintokundirecting the Oracles Repertory Theatre Company and with film and literary guru Professor Akinunmi Ishola, Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) president Professor Remi Raji-Oyelade and Oyo State ANA chairman Dr Solomon Iguanre, Professor Nelson Fashina in close support with an approximately 200 plus keen audience. And a fine time was had by all.  In this event we joined similar nationwide events and thousands of theatre arts professionals, students, literary giants, gurus and aficionados and many millions of Nigerians just happy that our human rights and democracy champion has defied the military and political odds and reached this 80th milestone in one democratic piece.

    As we congratulate him we must encourage all parents and youth to fight to get Soyinka books available in every home and booklist. Has Nigeria monetised books, recommending on the booklist only those for which money has changed hands, ‘book corruption’? Is it possible that corruption disrespects even a Noble Prize sufficiently to allow governors and commissioners to strike a Nobel Prize winner from every booklist unless money has changed hands? There is no excuse for Soyinka not to be permanent number one to be on every Nigerian and African book list. Shame. And congratulations to Akin Bello, former chairman of ANA, Oyo State for winning the 2014 International Soyinka Prize for Literature. Google him and buy the book. Will it make booklists nationwide?

    Stop Press: Even at this closing stage, can the Non-Sovereign National Conference (NSNC) or the Senate or Reps recommend that driving licences be issued for five and probably ten years. This is especially important because of the managerial stress experienced in obtaining the new licence needing renewal in three years. Shame.  Nigerians must value their time and fight anything which can be streamlined by extending the life of any government instrument like a passport or a driving licence. I am sure the ‘ayes’ will have it and save millions of Nigerians billions of hours in queues.

    You will recall that I suggested in this column at the beginning of this NSNC that the delegates should visit a day and a night across the Niger and Benue rivers to see first-hand one another’s territory? Such an exchange visit, had it been carried out, would perhaps have given opposing sides in the resource control debate a deeper understanding of decay, destruction and denial of the use of the land for livelihood, water, food or rest caused by oil and gas flaring on one hand and the severe effects of desertification caused by the sun, sand and Sahara empathy for the other. One should add first-hand look at erosion troubles also. Whatever figure is agreed we all know that the reason why Nigeria is 50 years behind in development in most areas has nothing to do with revenue allocation formulas and everything to do with massive political and civil service corruption.

    Every state, every local government has had more than enough to provide and equip all the hospitals, clinics, schools, roads and running water needed to be first class. Our national, state and LGA primary problem remains corruption at every level from politics to civil service to contractor corruption taking up to 50% and sometimes even 100% of allocated funds. This is clearly shown by the huge sums involved in corruption cases across Nigeria. Just imagine where the amenities and social services would be with such sums properly utilised.

    Unless the NSNC can offer severe quick penalties for political, civil service and contractor corruption, no revenue allocation formula will translate to an improves standard of living for the masses of people living near and in the poverty range in Nigeria. The politicians, the powerful and contractors will continue to steal in the name under the evil cloak of politics. The NSNC can recommend a corruption-proof funding strategy for all political parties. If not  we may as well invite the political class to continue to rape and rob us through excessive salaries and perks, (SAP) and constitutional projects from which only 1/3 to ½ of the funds are estimated to actually reach the citizens. NSNC should have studied international practice and related political salaries to other jobs to reduce hyper-salaries. It has recommended part-time sitting. Hurray! Did it recommend one house- Senorep or Reposen House – the house of survivors?

    O yes, the World Cup is over and it goes to Germany and shamefully still no footballs in Nigerian schools to train Generation Next! Is it not diversionary ‘foolball’ as politicians, civil servants and contractors collude to steal our inheritance? What gain, what pain, what cost? What corruption and incompetence in the NFF? Not all work is play! Now we can get back to work.

     

  • Soyinka is a man of extraordinary courage, says Atiku

    Soyinka is a man of extraordinary courage, says Atiku

    Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar has said Nobel Laureate Prof Wole Soyinka is a credible social critic who created a big space for himself in the hearts of Nigerians.

    In a statement yesterday in Abuja by his media office on Soyinka’s 80th birthday, the former vice-president said he always admired the Nobel Laureate’s patriotism and courage to speak freely and honestly on public issues.

    Atiku said: “Soyinka is an inimitable and indomitable social critic who does not hesitate to criticise Nigeria’s leaders whenever he believes they were going wrong.”

    The Turaki Adamawa noted that the Nobel Laureate looked at national issues beyond ethnic and regional sentiments, adding: “His views are coloured by the larger national interests.”

    The former vice-president also recalled that when Soyinka was criticising the governments in power, many Nigerians praised him from safe distance.

    Abubakar said the Nobel Laureate was always on the side of the ordinary Nigerians.

    According to him, Soyinka’s courage to criticise military regimes, which at one point took him to jail, was a shining example of his remarkable courage.

    He wished the Nobel Laureate many more years of patriotic service to Nigeria and humanity.

     

  • Photo: Soyinka through the years

    Photo: Soyinka through the years

  • Wole Soyinka in words

    Wole Soyinka in words

    “The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.”

    “Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie.”

    “And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others.”

     

    “And gradually they’re beginning to recognize the fact that there’s nothing more secure than a democratic, accountable, and participatory form of government. But it’s sunk in only theoretically; it has not yet sunk in completely in practical terms.”

     

    “Even when I’m writing plays I enjoy having company and mentally I think of that company as the company I’m writing for.”

    “The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny.”

    “The hand that dips into the bottom of the pot will eat the biggest snail.”

     

    “There is only one home to the life of a river-mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the soul of man: there is only one world to the spirit of our race. If that world leaves its course and smashes on boulders of the great void, whose world will give us shelter?”

     

    “Well, the first thing is that truth and power for me form an antithesis, an antagonism, which will hardly ever be resolved. I can define infact; can simplify the history of human society, the evolution of human society, as a contest between power and freedom.”

     

    “Looking at faces of people, one gets the feeling there’s a lot of work to be done.”

     

    “I grew up in an atmosphere where words were an integral part of culture.”

    “My horizon on humanity is enlarged by reading the writers of poems, seeing a painting, listening to some music, some opera, which has nothing at all to do with a volatile human condition or struggle or whatever. It enriches me as a human being.”

     

    “A tiger does not shout its tigritude, it acts.”

     

    “I think that feeling that if one believed absolutely in any cause, then one must have the confidence, the self-certainty, to go through with that particular course of action.”

    “I found, when I left, that there were others who felt the same way. We’d meet, they’d come and seek me out, we’d talk about the future. And I found that their depression and pessimism was every bit as acute as mine.”

     

    “Very conscious of the fact that an effort was being made to destroy my mind, because I was deprived of books, deprived of any means of writing, deprived of human companionship. You never know how much you need it until you’re deprived of it.”

     

    “Each time I think I’ve created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space.”

     

    “I don’t really consider myself a novelist; it just came out purely by accident.”

     

    “Given the scale of trauma caused by the genocide, Rwanda has indicated that however thin the hope of a community can be, a hero always emerges. Although no one can dare claim that it is now a perfect state, and that no more work is needed, Rwanda has risen from the ashes as a model or truth and reconciliation.”

     

    “Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth.”

     

    “See, even despite pious statements to the contrary, much of the industrialized world has not yet come to terms with the recognition of the fallacy of what I call the strong man syndrome.”

     

    “Human life has meaning only to that degree and as long as it is lived in the service of humanity.”

     

    “The novel, for me, was an accident. I really don’t consider myself a novelist.”

     

    “I am convinced that Nigeria would have been a more highly developed country without the oil. I wished we’d never smelled the fumes of petroleum.”

     

    “Under a dictatorship, a nation ceases to exist. All that remains is a fiefdom, a planet of slaves regimented by aliens from outer space.”

     

    “Education is lacking in most of those who pontificate.”

     

    “I’m an Afro-realist. I take what comes, and I do my best to affect what is unacceptable in society.”

     

    “No human is completely fearless.”

    “Before you’re a writer, you’re a citizen, a human being, and therefore the weapons of the citizen are at your disposal to use or not use.”

    “I don’t have the sort of temperament that submits to Christianity or Islam.”

     

    “I like to say, ‘I spend one-third of my time in Nigeria, one-third in Europe or America, and one-third on a plane.”

     

    “Military dictatorship, you can focus on it, you can fight it directly. It’s a band of power-driven people.”

     

    “The blatant aggressiveness of theocracies I find distressing, because I grew up when Christians, Muslim and animists lived peacefully together.”

     

    “The scales of reckoning with mortality are never evenly weighted, alas, and thus it is on the shoulders of the living that the burden of justice must continue to rest.”

     

    “Colonialism bred an innate arrogance, but when you undertake that sort of imperial adventure, that arrogance gives way to a feeling of accommodativeness. You take pride in your openness.”

     

    “Being the first black Nobel laureate, and the first African, the African world considered me personal property. I lost the remaining shreds of my anonymity, even to walk a few yards in London, Paris or Frankfurt without being stopped.”

     

    “When I write plays, I’m already seeing the shapes on stage, of the actors and their interaction, and so on and so forth. I don’t think I’ve ever written one play as an abstract piece, as a literary piece, floating in the air somewhere, to be flushed out later on.”

     

    “After the death of the sadistic dictator Gen. Sanni Abacha in 1998, Nigeria underwent a one-year transitional military administration headed by Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, who uncharacteristically bowed out precisely on the promised date for military disengagement. Did the military truly disengage, however? No.”

     

    “My understanding of the creative process is simply that all cultures and all concerns meet at a certain point, the human point in which everything is related to one another. That has been my creative experience. I never know who’s influencing me at any time.”

     

    Courtesy: http://www.brainyquote.com