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Tag: Wole Soyinka

  • For WS @ 80: Baroka and the long road to and beyond his age

    For WS @ 80: Baroka and the long road to and beyond his age

    Last semester, I taught Wole Soyinka’s The Lion and the Jewel for the first time in about thirty years. Though I do like the play a lot, it is not one of my favourite Soyinka plays, not one of his dramatic writings that I regard as some of the best plays ever written. I believe that the last time that I actually read The Lion and the Jewel was around the late 1990s when I was completing the first draft of what would eventually become my full-length book on all the writings of Soyinka titled Wole Soyinka: Politics, Poetics, Postcolonialism. At any rate, when I re-read and taught the play recently, I was in no small measure tantalised by the fact that though I had long reached and passed the age of 60, I was startled by the realisation that I am much older than Baroka, the quintessential “old man” of all of Soyinka’s plays! To be exact, I felt at one and the same time shocked and elated: shocked that I am now and have been for a long time Baroka’s elder; elated by the rather deeply personal and existential proof of the old, hallowed Latin proverb concerning the relationship between art and life, “ars longa, vita brevis”. The phrase literally means “art is long, life is short”. The central meaning that has traditionally been ascribed to is the view that while life, lived human life, is short, art lasts for ever. Additionally, the phrase also implies that that the life of the artist and the epoch in which he or she lived is preserved permanently in his or her great works. In other words, let life be as short as it usually biologically is; great art makes life imperishable. More on these later in this short tribute to WS at 80; for now, back to my disbelief that I m now the “elder” of Baroka.

    Definitely, speaking for myself and those of my generation of writers, critics, actors, artistes and “groupies” who have been close to WS, from now on, any time that a discussion of the characters of Soyinka’s plays comes to a conversation about the crafty “lion’ of Ilujinle, some self-referential vibes will go through us when he is, yet again, identified as an “old man”! WS, why didn’t you make Baroka 80? A futile, perhaps even fatuous wish! For the fact is that Baroka will always be 60 anytime he is performed or read in the play. If Soyinka had made him 70 in 1963 when the play was published (it had been performed many years earlier before its formal publication) he would still be 70 today. He will always be, now and forever, any age that Soyinka had given him when he wrote the play – 70, 80 or 90, any age he was given at his imaginative “birthing” by WS.

    Perhaps the most astonishing thing of all in what I am here catachrestically calling Baroka’s “birthing” by WS is that Soyinka was a young man in his early 20s when he wrote the play and yet he wrote compellingly, memorably about an old man of 60. Let us set aside the fact that he wrote a self-serving craftiness with not a small amount of conservative power lust into Baroka’s captivating senescence. The point remains as indisputable as it is also astonishing that in his early 20s WS could enter so completely into the emotional, psychic world of an old man. To this we should counterpoise the fact that Lakunle, the young man who at that stage in Soyinka’ career was much closer in age to WS was made the butt of the jokes of all the other characters of the play and the hapless victim of Baroka’s wily stratagems. WS will have to both believe and forgive me for saying this, but since my very first reading of The Lion and the Jewel I have always thought that Soyinka took sides with Baroka against Lakunle not only because the foppish and naive village schoolteacher was everything WS did not want truly radical and progressive members of his generation to be but also because WS was looking well into the future and seeing himself in those aspects of Baroka that defy age when it comes to matters concerning members of the opposite sex! As a teacher of literature for five decades now, I know that characters should not be confused, not be conflated with their authors, but I am giving my honest opinion here. [If a libel suit is served on me for making this “aspersion”, I will have Femi Falana tie up the lawsuit in an endless, irresolvable knot in the law courts!]

    More seriously, it strikes me now – and only now – that some of the greatest and most memorable characters of Soyinka’s plays are all old men whom the playwright wrote into imperishable imaginative existence when he was a young man well under the age 40. Some of these are Forest Head of A Dance of the Forests; Professor of The Road; Oba Danlola of Kongi’s Harvest; Old Man of Madmen and Specialists; and Elesin Oba of Death and the King’s Horseman. Parenthetically, I might add here that there are two and only two old women in all of Soyinka’s plays that match the towering presence of the old men in the plays in which they appear and these are Iya Agba in Madmen and Specialists and Iyaloja in Death and the King’s Horseman. But maleness as such is not part of the essence of the old men of Soyinka’s great plays, with the exception perhaps of only Elesin Oba in Death and the King’s Horseman. Neither is age in and of itself the thing that stands out in the characterisation of the old, senescent protagonists of Soyinka’s great plays. It is something very tragic and at the same time very exhilarating, something in fact deeply aporetic: they all bear the burden of ironic truths and a dazzling wisdom which neither saves them personally nor those who surround them in the expectation that they will fulfill the messianic hopes they inspire.

    Now I first read all these plays and came across these characters when I was myself a young man, at a time when the formless, apolitical and post-adolescent, non-conformism of my teenage years was being gradually supplanted by a lifelong devotion to socialism in our country, our continent and our world. In that context, these characters of Soyinka’s great plays confused but also endlessly fascinated me. On the one hand, the characters all stood for or in the end inscribed a radical anti-messianism in social contexts that had a surfeit of evil, cruelty and suffering and therefore had a great, overwhelming need to be changed for the better. But on the other hand, the characters each took an unsparing and savagely corrosive look at the evil in themselves and in their world and refused totally to be “saviors”, even at the cost of being destroyed themselves.

    In a way, Soyinka can be described as a consistently non- or anti-didactic playwright but he does have some plays and many poems that can be described as quasi-didactic, plays like the “Jero” plays, The Beatification of an Area Boy and the sketches and revues of the “Before the Blackout” series. But the thing that confounded me when I first read and/or watched Soyinka’s plays in performance was the fact that it was the group of radically non-messianic and anti-didactic plays that far more fascinated me than the other group. Which is why, in the years of my young intellectual and political adulthood, when, without exactly knowing it, I was on my way to achieving a complex understanding of the role of contradiction and aporia in life, art and politics, those great plays of Soyinka and their larger-than-life “old men” characters were of immense help.

    WS is now biologically 80. But vicariously, through a life in art of ferocious and stunning imaginative power, he had already been 80 and older for many decades now, while all the time he retained a youthful energy and drive that were all the more amazing in that he combined many lives into his one single and exceptional life. His appetite for life is vast, like that of an okanjua, a glutton whose capacity for life and living is matched only by the vastness of his capacity for work and self-renewal. By the law of averages, he should have departed this life a long time ago. Sani Abacha was not the only dictator who sought mightily to terminate his life, Idi Dada Amin of Uganda having also been one who sought to end what he regarded as his torments at the hands of WS by plotting to have his life cut short. And the accounts are fully documented that Soyinka was not supposed to have survived his detention by Gowon’s regime during the Nigeria-Biafra war. But Abacha went further than any other megalomaniacal user of the weapon of killing implacable foes by having told confidantes that he would like to be the first ruler in history to have the satisfaction of hanging a Nobel Laureate. Abacha it is that died; WS is 80. And ko tii si iku lo ju e, Ahusubitrue!

     

    Biodun Jeyifo

    bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu

  • Soyinka is 80

    Soyinka is 80

    Hooray to the dramatist, poet, novelist, mythologist, essayist, memoirist, wordsmith, human rights avatar and culture icon…

    It was positively symbolic and significant that the prestigious $20,000 Wole Soyinka Prize for Literature in Africa was presented to this year’s winner in Lagos, a few days to the 80th birthday, on July 13, of the colossus of letters that the award celebrates. Also, it was a fitting and remarkable coincidence that the genre considered for the fifth edition of the biennial celebration of literary brilliance on the continent was Soyinka’s own forte, drama. What is more, the illustrious Nigerian playwright and the first African Nobel Laureate in Literature brought his radiance to the event and crowned the prize winner.

    Interestingly, his remarks on the occasion bore the striking features of his life of adventure and social activism. He was quoted as saying: “I am going into the forest to celebrate my birthday. I invite you all. But bring your own weapons, because most of them are in the wrong hands.”

    Given his acknowledged mental fecundity and his acclaimed creative imagination, it is possible that Soyinka intended layers of meaning. Did his words, for instance, represent an allusion to the notorious Sambisa Forest in Borno State where over 200 abducted and still-missing Chibok schoolgirls were believed to have been initially caged by the Islamist terror group Boko Haram? Did he imply that the people have to design their own weapons of resistance to the oppression of power? Or did the weapons take a more biological tone of ferocious fangs, ominous claws and jaws of the wild?

    There is no doubt that Soyinka’s existence continues to emphasise the critical message of universal justice, and he has gone to great and admirable lengths in pursuit of this philosophy, which is best encapsulated by his famous one-liner, “Justice is the first condition of humanity.” It is commendable that he has consistently played the important role of the defender of human freedoms, especially in Nigeria, but also internationally. According to him, “The greatest threat to freedom is the absence of criticism.” It is noteworthy that his conscientious antagonism to the agents of darkness is recognised and respected to the point that his voice is constantly anticipated in response to reactionary forces.

    True to this characterisation, Soyinka has an impressive history of courageous interventions in his country’s trajectory, including in particular his sensational and mind-boggling mediation in the combustible 1960s political crisis in the Western Region, his effort to avert the civil war that raged from 1967 to 1970, his committed opposition to the worst manifestations of military despotism and his unequivocal insistence on a truly democratic, accountable and participatory form of government. It is a testimony to his indomitable spirit that imprisonment and forced exile on account of unmistakable life-threatening danger proved to be weak restraining forces in his lifelong expression of the possibility of a better society.

    Indeed, in Soyinka, there is a rare conflation of the artist and the activist at a superlative level; and the portrait of the fighter is brightly coloured by creative essence. Undoubtedly, in his literary career, the icing on the cake must be the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature, an honour he received in the same year he was awarded the Agip Prize for Literature. It is worth mentioning that for the Nobel decoration, which is indisputably regarded as the world’s biggest recognition for literary excellence, Soyinka was painted as a master of form and content “who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence.” There is no question that the accomplishment had the quality of a redeeming feature for the black man in a world corrupted by racism.

    However, one recent news-making episode not only demonstrated Soyinka’s heightened sense of decency; it also instructively showed that he was not uncritical and indiscriminate in his acceptance of honour. Notably, he created controversy by his rejection of the centenary award by the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan this year, describing the inclusion of the late military dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha, “on the nation’s Roll of Honour”, as “this national insult.”  He delineated Abacha as “a murderer and thief of no redeeming quality,” adding, “I can’t think of nothing more grotesque and derisive of the lifetime struggle of several on this (Honours) List and their selfless services to humanity.”

    At the core of his expansive canonical oeuvre, which significantly reflects the influences of his Yoruba roots and covers drama, poetry, prose, movies and music, are the human condition in the social context and the exploration of truth.  ”Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth,” according to Soyinka, a product of the University College, Ibadan, Nigeria; Leeds University, UK; and the Royal Court Theatre, London. His well- garlanded distinction is validated by the stunning fact that in the almost 30 years since he won the Nobel at age 52, he has not gone cold creatively and remains warm politically.  In the course of of his career, he has blessed this earth with such high-powered works as A Dance of The forest, Death and the King’s Horseman, A Play of Giants, Opera Wonyosi, The Road, Madmen and Specialists, among other plays known for their deep roots in Yoruba and African culture, experimentation of form and at once complex and lucid language. Idanre and Other Poems, A Shuttle In the Crypt, Ogun Abibiman are works of poetry that also stand him out as a man of towering talent and creativity. We cannot forget the heft of his output in prose as novelist and memoirist. At 80, his juices are still in high ferment.

    He is a living proof that the academic can be practical and the public intellectual can make a profound social impact. His distinctive luxuriantly grey Afro and beard complement the substance of his erudition and wisdom; and it is safe to say that his heroic stature is assured.

  • Jonathan hails Soyinka at 80

    Jonathan hails Soyinka at 80

    President Goodluck Jonathan has congratulated Nobel laureate, Prof.  Wole Soyinka who clocks 80 on Sunday.

    In a statement by Special Adviser (Media), to the President, Dr Reuben Abati, Jonathan applauded Soyinka for his life-long dedication and indefatigable commitment to using his acclaimed genius and talents not only in the service of the arts, but also for the promotion of democracy, good governance and respect for human rights in Nigeria, Africa and beyond.

    “ As he enters the elite club of the world’s highly revered octogenarians and very special people who have made very significant and indelible contributions to their countries and humanity, the President joins Prof. Soyinka, his family, friends, associates, readers and fans across the world in giving thanks to God Almighty for his glorious life of service to the arts, his nation and mankind at large.

    “ The President assures Prof. Soyinka that he will always be celebrated and honoured by his proud countrymen, women and children for his famed literary works and for his exemplary career which has inspired others to take up a life of selfless service to humanity.

    “ He wishes Prof. Soyinka very happy 80th birthday celebrations and prays that God Almighty will grant him many more years of good health and strength to continue with his devotion to making the world a better place for his people and all who live in it.”

     

     

  • The ‘forgotten’ girls of Chibok

    The ‘forgotten’ girls of Chibok

    On Saturday, May 10, Wole Soyinka, professor and Nobel laureate, appeared ontheBritish Broadcasting Corporation’s programme, Hardtalk and added his voice to the growing international discourse on Nigeria, especially the issue of the disappearance, on April 15, of more than 250 schoolgirls from the Government Girls’ Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State. Among other things, Soyinka said: “The Nigerian nation-space is poised on a knife’s point; it is failing, but not beyond redemption. The rescue of the abducted Chibok schoolgirls and the outcome of the National Conference would help define the country’s future.”  Today, more than one month after, the opinion canvassed by the Nobel laureate remains fresh in our national psyche as the issue of the abducted Chibok girls remains unresolved.

    The country has been thrown into one huge, dramatic macabre dance since that midnight hostage-taking by the Boko Haram terrorists. The incident has drawn both the anger and dagger of civilised humanity all over the world who have continued, in no unmistaken terms, to condemn it as sordid and barbaric. Regrettably, two months down the line, what we have been witnessing are empty talks and promises of a phantom rescue operation to free the girls from their captors who are in no way ready to relax their stranglehold on them. With various pressure groups mushrooming daily all over the place, the whole thing has now ascended a crescendo of pulsating emotional gyration, ventilation of anger and global condemnation. Perhaps, for the first time in the history of Nigeria, the entire global community is united in solidarity with the country.

    Many foreign countries have offered and are still offering assistance in several ways to help the country in its bid to rescue the abducted girls as well as defeat the terrorists who are now holding on to the country’s jugular. Everybody seems to be eager to get the girls out of the gulag. Unfortunately, days have turned into weeks and months, and nothing tangible or cheering has been on the horizon about the girls’ return to reunite with their loved ones. For the parents and relatives of the unfortunate girls, hope has turned into despair, and a big nightmare with no end in sight.

    While all these are going on, the military, saddled with engineering the release of the girls, appears to be stuck. On May 26, Alex Badeh, Air Marshal and Chief of Defence Staff, told a curious nation that the army have located the abducted Chibok girls. He said this while addressing members of the Citizen Initiative for Security Awareness (CISA), a non-governmental organisation (NGO), who were on a solidarity campaign to the Defence Headquarters. He assured themthat everything was being done to ensure the girls’ safe rescue but he quickly chipped in that the military would not use force in the rescue operation. His words: “We want our girls back, I can tell you our military can do it, but where they are held, do we go with force? Nobody should say Nigerian military does not know what it is doing. We can’t kill our girls in the name of trying to get them back. So we are working. The President has empowered us to do the work and no one should castigate the military”.

    Good talk. Except that many weeks after this promise, there is hardly anything to show that those girls are getting nearer to their freedom. In the first instance, many people opinethat what Badeh said was very unprofessional in that it was tantamount to playing to the hands of the enemy. Or else how does one view such a statement which is like giving away what could have been a closely guarded secret while the army strategises to free the girls? Why announce to the whole world that the army was aware of the location of the girls? The terrorists’ response will be to simply relocate the girls further into the wilderness to avoid any surprise from the army. This is why people believe the statement was either totally uncalled for or grossly lacking in military diplomacy.

    Just like Badeh has said, the issue of using force to free the girls may not be feasible. But what are the options available now to achieve that aim? Many people, including Shehu Sani, the human rights activist believed to have a channel through which the leadership of Boko Haram could be reached and engaged, have advocated dialogue as a way of breaking the logjam. Sani, it was, who facilitated the interface between former President Olusegun Obasanjo, the family of Mohammed Yusuf, the slain leader of the sect and other surviving leaders of the sect in Maiduguri in September, 2011. Although that visit generated a lot of controversies and even led to the death of some of the leaders of the sect who met with Obasanjo during the visit, it has, so far, remained the only serious interface anybody, either within the government or outside of it, has had with the sect.

    Now, the former President has come up with yet another suggestion that he could reach out to Boko Haram on the fate of the school girls, but regretted that the federal government has not given him the green light to act. In an interview on the Hausa service of the British Broadcasting Corporation last week, Obasanjo said: “I have ways of reaching them (Boko Haram) but I have not been given the go ahead”. The former President expressed fear that some of the schoolgirls may never return home but added that the terrorists might free those found to be pregnant or have given birth. He also expressed worry that the girls might have been separated and kept in different locations.

    As if giving government’s reaction to Obasanjo’s statement, Mike Omeri, coordinator of the National Information Centre, recently created to brief the public on the war against the terrorists, said the former President didnot need any clearance from President Goodluck Jonathan before engaging in dialogue with the Boko Haram sect. Hewondered why Obasanjo would be waiting for any formal clearance from President Goodluck Jonathan when hehad unfettered access to him (Jonathan). He expressed surprise at the development and said: “The government has not stopped any individual who has access to the sect not to come forward and intervene in this matter.”  This is playing politics with lives.

    Earlier last week, some newspapers reported that the parents of the abducted girls had become disillusioned about government’s efforts to free the girls. In fact, some of the parents are said to have died heartbroken, while others have relapsed into all forms of depression as a result of the continuous absence of their loved ones. As they say, he who wears the shoe knows where it pinches. But for how long would these parents remain traumatized? This is why the government should consider the proposal for dialogue as a way of putting an end to the nightmare created by these girls’ kidnap. After all, the US government recently exchanged one prisoner, who was even a deserter, for very senior five al-Qaeda leaders who had been in Guantanamo prison for years. For the exchange to have taken place, they must have been talking.

    What this implies is that there is need for dialogue. It does not appear that the country can free these girls by using force. There is nowhere in the world where that has worked. We have wasted precious time after the abduction before embarking on a rescue mission while the terrorists have fully settled down with the girls in their dungeon.  As things stand now, it will be most appropriate for the government to explore dialogue, whether put together by Obasanjo or any other person, to get the girls out before it is too late. It is really getting late. Like Obasanjo said, right from day one, I have always had this feeling that not all the girls may come back alive. That is the bitter truth. We must move quickly to forestall a high casualty rate among the girls as well as avoid turning them into the forgotten girls of Chibok.

  • Chibok: Soyinka backs FG’s acceptance of US offer

    Chibok: Soyinka backs FG’s acceptance of US offer

    Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, on Tuesday backed the Federal Government’s acceptance of United States offer to provide assistance for ongoing efforts to rescue the abducted students of Government Girls Secondary School, Chibok, Borno State.
    He spoke on a CNN programme on Tuesday.
    According to him, President Goodluck Jonathan should have asked for the US assistance much earlier in view of the seriousness of the situation.
    “I don’t believe in false pride. The problem has been allowed to fester for too long. We are dealing with monstrosity, the kind we’ve never known before.

    ” The situation has gone beyond the capacity of the federal government and it has to be internationalized, ” he stated.

  • Redemption of Africa (ll)

    Redemption of Africa (ll)

    (A review of Wole Soyinka’s Harmattan Haze on an African Spring)

    Politics of exclusion, intra and inter-country boundary problems, lust for power, warped ideology, etc. are identified as the heart of the crises plaguing the continent in the book. While underscoring the place of “strict adherence to democratic justice” in resolving most of the myriads of convulsions threatening the continent, the blind defence of these European-created boundaries of death certainly demand interrogation: “Is it truly in the interest of the occupants of that continent that the present boundaries are being consolidated, defended, held so inviolate that the population of the continent is routinely decimated, millions maimed and incapacitated for life, vast hectares of farm land rendered useless by liberally sown anti-personnel mines? Youths are robbed of their innocence and their humanity, as the continent becomes the corrupted playground of boy soldiers. In short, what price is worth paying for the illusion of boundaries and ‘sovereignty’?”

    To clear any misconception, the playwright-historian is not advocating the disintegration of the present nation entities. In fact, a proper interrogation could even lead to the opposite – amalgamation. The point is where such horrendous human conflict is traceable to this product of European fictioning, as in the case of Sudan, “Where this is seen clearly to be the case, and internal instability of a costly dimension evidently derives from such impositions, common sense urges that, at the very least, the basis for such amalgamations be revisited with a view to ascertaining where precisely lies the will of the people themselves, acting in freedom.”

    The criminality of the Janjaweed, under the banner of impunity, really troubled the human rights activist and he devoted a lot of attention to it. South Sudan eventually gained its independence after the publication of this book but then what does one make of the current internecine upheavals in the new country? I think the answer to the situation could be located in Soyinka’s lecture during his investiture as Awo Laureate on March 7, 2013: WINDING DOWN HISTORY: RELIGION AND NATION, POWER AND FREEDOM.

    One then comes to the conclusion that, whereas there are no absolutes in any propositions, it seems the path of “democratic justice” , as enunciated by the author, can be the best of all the alternatives as a way of restoring our humanity in Africa. The sanctity of the rule of law, constitutional provisions that safeguard the interest of minorities and entrenchment of democratic norms such as free and fair elections, all within the structures of government most suitable for different countries based on their cultural, economic and socio-political realities – federal, confederal or unitary. But admittedly, these can only be achieved through interrogation of the present in an atmosphere perfumed with burning passion for justice. Restructuring, either of the structures of government, forms of government or power relations, seems inevitable across the African continent.

    If I may add in passing; in Nigeria, for instance, the present unitary system disguised as federalism must be dumped without further ado. The aim of dividing the country into three regions, each with a regional council in 1947, according to the then governor of colonial Nigeria, Sir Arthur Richards, was “To create a political system… within which the diverse elements, may progress at varying speeds, amicably and smoothly, towards a more closely integrated economic, social and political unity, without sacrificing the principles and ideals in their divergent ways of life.” Inherent in this submission was federalism. Again at the Ibadan General Conference, preparatory to the promulgation of Macpherson Constitution of 1951, the question on the structure of Nigeria was asked: “Do we wish to see a fully centralised system with all legislative and executive powers concentrated at the centre, or do we wish to develop a federal system under which each different region of the country would exercise a measure of internal autonomy?” The London Conference of 1953 and Lagos Conference of 1954 that followed emphasised a full-blown federal constitution, which was later captured in the Lyttleton Constitution of 1954 and Independence Constitution of 1960… Now that history has come full circle in Nigeria, we need to return to the bequest of our founding fathers – federalism.

    In Harmattan Haze on an African Spring, Wole Soyinka (WS) also holds that the redemption of African spirituality, indeed, Africa and the world lies in the embrace of the doctrines of Orisa. “Thus, for all seekers after peace and security of true community, and the space of serenity that enables the quest after Truth… we urge yet again the simple path that was travelled from the soil of the Yoruba, across the Atlantic landmass to contiguous nations, across the hostile oceans to the edge of the world in the Americas – Go to the Orisa, learn from the Orisa, and be wise.”

    What WS presented in this book is an exegesis of Orisa worship. The Babalawo (traditional healer/diviner), the equivalent of a Bishop or Imam is “the wistful embodiment of all that is missing in the political life of a continent.” Ifa, the equivalent of Bible or Koran, according to WS, “emphasises for us the perpetual elasticity of knowledge. Ifa’s tenets are governed by a frank acknowledgment of the fact that the definition of Truth is a goal that is constantly being sought by humanity, that existence itself is a passage to ultimate truth, and that claimants to possession of the definitiveness of knowledge are, in fact, the greatest obstacles to the attainment of Truth.”

    He rejects the tag of paganism often placed on believers of Orisa by Christianity and Islam and cautioned that these traditional religions should not be conflated with cults. “The accommodative spirit of the Yoruba gods (Ogun, Esu, Oya, Sopona, Sango, etc) remains the eternal bequest to a world that is riven by the spirit of intolerance, of xenophobia and suspicion,” he submits.

    WS spoke of the “beneficent gods and their potencies, their curative and fortifying interventions…the combative, even malevolent, who can be invoked to work against the enemy,” citing the reference by a former head of state after a visit to Mandela in prison to the potency of these traditional powers: “Where is our egbe? Where is our onde? Where is our famed juju to take out these perpetrators of hideous injustice on our own soil?”

    Rightly or wrongly, the question cannot escape the attention of a reader, let alone a reviewer: Why did these traditional powers not work against the intruders, including their religions on the continent of Africa?  The dramatist is a faithful of the Orisa but is he a worshiper in any shrine? This certainly is another conundrum.

    In summary, we cannot but agree with our erudite scholar that religion should be an evocation and constitute “the spice of life, not the trigger of strife.”

    The culture icon made a strong case for the efficacy and potency of traditional medicine, citing a haunting instance where the latter had come to the rescue of orthodox/western medicine. Harmattan Haze on an African Spring is a treasure trove, controversial to boot in some aspects.

    Finally, WS urged that the questioning of cultures and social norms within the concept of what is globally acceptable or fundamental human rights is a categorical imperative. Cultural relativism or respect for other cultures should be within such a context. You cannot say because in your own culture, the toe of the first born must be cut or that girls must not go to school, therefore I have to respect such.

    Of course, this lucubration cannot but contain some errors – the ritual every reviewer must perform. “African past and present” is given as “African past and presence” on page 19. Berlin Treaty of Partition of Africa took place in 1885, not 1881 as provided on page 50. “…is one of my favourite” should have been “favourites” on page 98; “it serves” is typed as “it serve” on page 196.

    Through the exploration in Harmattan Haze on an African Spring, Prof Wole Soyinka, my intellectual avatar, has once again reiterated the immensity and polyvalence of his knowledge. He has sown a seed on a fertile ground, which should sprout to produce “a new breed of explorers for the relay race towards a deeply craved Age of Universal Understanding – African inspired.”

     

    •Soyombo, is an Abeokuta-based journalist

  • Redemption of Africa (ll)

    (A review of Wole Soyinka’s Harmattan Haze on an African Spring)

    Politics of exclusion, intra and inter-country boundary problems, lust for power, warped ideology, etc. are identified as the heart of the crises plaguing the continent in the book. While underscoring the place of “strict adherence to democratic justice” in resolving most of the myriads of convulsions threatening the continent, the blind defence of these European-created boundaries of death certainly demand interrogation: “Is it truly in the interest of the occupants of that continent that the present boundaries are being consolidated, defended, held so inviolate that the population of the continent is routinely decimated, millions maimed and incapacitated for life, vast hectares of farm land rendered useless by liberally sown anti-personnel mines? Youths are robbed of their innocence and their humanity, as the continent becomes the corrupted playground of boy soldiers. In short, what price is worth paying for the illusion of boundaries and ‘sovereignty’?”

    To clear any misconception, the playwright-historian is not advocating the disintegration of the present nation entities. In fact, a proper interrogation could even lead to the opposite – amalgamation. The point is where such horrendous human conflict is traceable to this product of European fictioning, as in the case of Sudan, “Where this is seen clearly to be the case, and internal instability of a costly dimension evidently derives from such impositions, common sense urges that, at the very least, the basis for such amalgamations be revisited with a view to ascertaining where precisely lies the will of the people themselves, acting in freedom.”

    The criminality of the Janjaweed, under the banner of impunity, really troubled the human rights activist and he devoted a lot of attention to it. South Sudan eventually gained its independence after the publication of this book but then what does one make of the current internecine upheavals in the new country? I think the answer to the situation could be located in Soyinka’s lecture during his investiture as Awo Laureate on March 7, 2013: WINDING DOWN HISTORY: RELIGION AND NATION, POWER AND FREEDOM.

    One then comes to the conclusion that, whereas there are no absolutes in any propositions, it seems the path of “democratic justice” , as enunciated by the author, can be the best of all the alternatives as a way of restoring our humanity in Africa. The sanctity of the rule of law, constitutional provisions that safeguard the interest of minorities and entrenchment of democratic norms such as free and fair elections, all within the structures of government most suitable for different countries based on their cultural, economic and socio-political realities – federal, confederal or unitary. But admittedly, these can only be achieved through interrogation of the present in an atmosphere perfumed with burning passion for justice. Restructuring, either of the structures of government, forms of government or power relations, seems inevitable across the African continent.

    If I may add in passing; in Nigeria, for instance, the present unitary system disguised as federalism must be dumped without further ado. The aim of dividing the country into three regions, each with a regional council in 1947, according to the then governor of colonial Nigeria, Sir Arthur Richards, was “To create a political system… within which the diverse elements, may progress at varying speeds, amicably and smoothly, towards a more closely integrated economic, social and political unity, without sacrificing the principles and ideals in their divergent ways of life.” Inherent in this submission was federalism. Again at the Ibadan General Conference, preparatory to the promulgation of Macpherson Constitution of 1951, the question on the structure of Nigeria was asked: “Do we wish to see a fully centralised system with all legislative and executive powers concentrated at the centre, or do we wish to develop a federal system under which each different region of the country would exercise a measure of internal autonomy?” The London Conference of 1953 and Lagos Conference of 1954 that followed emphasised a full-blown federal constitution, which was later captured in the Lyttleton Constitution of 1954 and Independence Constitution of 1960… Now that history has come full circle in Nigeria, we need to return to the bequest of our founding fathers – federalism.

    In Harmattan Haze on an African Spring, Wole Soyinka (WS) also holds that the redemption of African spirituality, indeed, Africa and the world lies in the embrace of the doctrines of Orisa. “Thus, for all seekers after peace and security of true community, and the space of serenity that enables the quest after Truth… we urge yet again the simple path that was travelled from the soil of the Yoruba, across the Atlantic landmass to contiguous nations, across the hostile oceans to the edge of the world in the Americas – Go to the Orisa, learn from the Orisa, and be wise.”

    What WS presented in this book is an exegesis of Orisa worship. The Babalawo (traditional healer/diviner), the equivalent of a Bishop or Imam is “the wistful embodiment of all that is missing in the political life of a continent.” Ifa, the equivalent of Bible or Koran, according to WS, “emphasises for us the perpetual elasticity of knowledge. Ifa’s tenets are governed by a frank acknowledgment of the fact that the definition of Truth is a goal that is constantly being sought by humanity, that existence itself is a passage to ultimate truth, and that claimants to possession of the definitiveness of knowledge are, in fact, the greatest obstacles to the attainment of Truth.”

    He rejects the tag of paganism often placed on believers of Orisa by Christianity and Islam and cautioned that these traditional religions should not be conflated with cults. “The accommodative spirit of the Yoruba gods (Ogun, Esu, Oya, Sopona, Sango, etc) remains the eternal bequest to a world that is riven by the spirit of intolerance, of xenophobia and suspicion,” he submits.

    WS spoke of the “beneficent gods and their potencies, their curative and fortifying interventions…the combative, even malevolent, who can be invoked to work against the enemy,” citing the reference by a former head of state after a visit to Mandela in prison to the potency of these traditional powers: “Where is our egbe? Where is our onde? Where is our famed juju to take out these perpetrators of hideous injustice on our own soil?”

    Rightly or wrongly, the question cannot escape the attention of a reader, let alone a reviewer: Why did these traditional powers not work against the intruders, including their religions on the continent of Africa? The dramatist is a faithful of the Orisa but is he a worshiper in any shrine? This certainly is another conundrum.

    In summary, we cannot but agree with our erudite scholar that religion should be an evocation and constitute “the spice of life, not the trigger of strife.”

    The culture icon made a strong case for the efficacy and potency of traditional medicine, citing a haunting instance where the latter had come to the rescue of orthodox/western medicine. Harmattan Haze on an African Spring is a treasure trove, controversial to boot in some aspects.

    Finally, WS urged that the questioning of cultures and social norms within the concept of what is globally acceptable or fundamental human rights is a categorical imperative. Cultural relativism or respect for other cultures should be within such a context. You cannot say because in your own culture, the toe of the first born must be cut or that girls must not go to school, therefore I have to respect such.

    Of course, this lucubration cannot but contain some errors – the ritual every reviewer must perform. “African past and present” is given as “African past and presence” on page 19. Berlin Treaty of Partition of Africa took place in 1885, not 1881 as provided on page 50. “…is one of my favourite” should have been “favourites” on page 98; “it serves” is typed as “it serve” on page 196.

    Through the exploration in Harmattan Haze on an African Spring, Prof Wole Soyinka, my intellectual avatar, has once again reiterated the immensity and polyvalence of his knowledge. He has sown a seed on a fertile ground, which should sprout to produce “a new breed of explorers for the relay race towards a deeply craved Age of Universal Understanding – African inspired.”

     

    •Soyombo, is an Abeokuta-based journalist

     

  • Exhibition on Soyinka’s 80th birthday opens

    Exhibition on Soyinka’s 80th birthday opens

    Activities marking Nobel Laureate Prof Wole Soyinka’s 80th birthday celebration have begun with an exhibition, tagged WS80 International Cultural Exchange.

    The exhibition, which comprises life paintings of the global literary icon, will open at the Ogun State Cultural Centre, Kuto, Abeokuta, on Thursday, April 24 and run till July.

    The 80-day exhibition was planned to be a countdown to the renowned writer’s 80th birthday in July.

    It also marks the fifth edition of the yearly WS International Cultural Exchange (ICE) Programme, which began in 2010 when Soyinka turned 76.

    The Chief Executive Officer of Zmirage Multimedia Company and Executive Producer of the WS80-ICE Programme, Alhaji Teju Kareem said a weekly workshop for secondary school pupils in Ogun State was being organised for the celebration.

    He said the workshop was being planned to inspire the youths throughout the 80 days.

    Kareem said the exhibition, being organised in conjunction with the Ogun State Ministry of Education, and Culture and Tourism, “will be declared open by …Governor (Ibikunle Amosun) at 11am on Thursday, April 24”.

    Among other dignitaries, Prof. Soyinka himself is expected to attend the opening session, with notable artists, art patrons and collectors.

    Life paintings of Prof Soyinka, which were produced during the maiden edition of “The Legend Series”, coordinated and conducted by the Olu Ajayi Studios, will be displayed throughout the exhibition period.

    About 20 artists of diverse orientations and techniques have hosted the Nobel laureate during studio sessions where the renowned writer was painted life as directed by the popular painter, Olu Ajayi.

    It was learnt that since it began, “The Legend Series” has featured Prof Yussuf Grillo; Prof. Bruce Onobrakpeya; the Oba of Benin, Omo Noba N’edo Erediauwa Uku Akpolokpolo and, lately, Prof. John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo.

  • Mark, Soyinka absent at Olubadan’s conferment ceremony

    Mark, Soyinka absent at Olubadan’s conferment ceremony

    Senate President David Mark and Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, who were to be conferred with honorary chieftaincy titles by the Olubadan of Ibadan, Oba Samuel Odulana, were absent yesterday during the ceremony.

    This was part of the one- week activities to mark the centenary birthday celebration of the Olubadan, which kicked off on April 13.

    The Nation gathered that the duo had been formally informed a couple of months ago about the titles but were unfortunately not present or represented yesterday.

    Only an America-based Historian, Prof. Toyin Falola, was physically present to receive his chieftaincy title of Bobapitan of Ibadanland.

    Falola said that he accepted the honour because Oba Odulana is not given to frivolous conferment of titles on undeserving individuals.

    On why Mark and Soyinka were absent, the Personal Assistant to the monarch, Chief Isiaka Akinpelu, said that the Senate President had already written to the palace on his unavailability for the conferment due to official engagements.

    He said:” Mark promised to give us a new date to receive the title. Also for Prof Soyinka, he is still mourning the death of his daughter and he called us yesterday evening that he would choose a new date when he will come for the title”.

     

  • S’eruba S’erubawon

    The latest play from the stable of Prof. Wole Soyinka, our own WS, is Alapata Apata. Unfortunately, Hardball has not read that play.

    But its stunning pun of a butcher (Alapata , in Yoruba) doing his butchering in Apata (Yoruba for rock, though there is a rocky neighbourhood in Ibadan, Oyo State, which hosts the Government College, Ibadan, the secondary school the Nobel Laureate attended), is suggestive of some high drama.

    That is why Hardball will most respectfully request our WS to craft another play, S’eruba S’erubawon, to capture the electoral theatre of the absurd, looming over Ekiti State and the State of Osun.

    To put the records straight, S’erubawon is the formidable one that puts the fear of God into others. That was the moniker, on the hustings, of Isiaka Adeleke, who served as two-year governor of Osun State, in the Ibrahim Babangida diarchy, before Sani Abacha scrapped all the grand pretence. That was Adeleke’s first coming.

    But his second coming, his much touted, eleventh-hour Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) gubernatorial bid for the State of Osun, has been less than rosy. The one who used to put the fear of God into others has become one, in which others put the fear of God! That is the long and short of the pitiful collapse of Adeleke’s gubernatorial bid; and hence, the urgent request for the play, S’eruba S’erubawon.

    The S’erubawon of yore, apparently thought nothing of the Biblical quip that the kingdom of God suffers violence — until, from news report, he got the sobering treatment. The iconoclastic duo of Iyiola Omisore and Jelili Adesiyan, simply S’eruba S’erubawon (mortally scared the hitherto intrepid).

    The combined forces of Omisore, Adeleke’s rival for the ticket, and Adesiyan, minister of Police Affairs and his armada of Police henchmen, reportedly did the trick. The pair and their uniformed enforcers allegedly gave Adeleke the beating of his life. That virtually excoriated from him any gubernatorial spirit! Now, from the safety of his Ede country home, S’erubawon is threatening court action.

    The Osun travesty, where an opponent would allegedly manhandle another to scare him off the race, is the grim symbol of the PDP-Jonathan Presidency’s conspiratorial tactics in the two crucial elections in Ekiti and Osun.

    The PDP knows, from its records in the two states, and its parlous federal scorecard, the election would be a disaster.

    Yet, it is bent on illicit and illegal tactics, euphemistically called federal might: Musiliu Obanikoro, minister of state for Defence, putting troops to illegal and partisan uses in Lagos; and Adesiyan making the Police no less than uniformed thugs in Osun. Put in the pair of peculiar candidates in Ayo Fayose (Ekiti) and Omisore (Osun), and the picture is all too clear.

    But all this is not new. Jonathan should find time to read Soyinka’s Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years (for what happened to the power rascals of the 1st Republic); and enjoy Unlimited Liability Company, the musical album that saw off the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) power bandits of the 2nd Republic.

    Those who don’t learn from history are fated to end in its belly!