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Tag: Wole Soyinka

  • Ojo set for Wole Soyinka biopic

    Ojo set for Wole Soyinka biopic

    • By Kayowa Adeboyega

    Nigerian actor cum film director, Joshua Ojo is set to tell the story of Nigeria’s nobel laureate, Professor Akinwande Wole Soyinka in a biopic set for release in June 2024.

    The biopic’s release will be coming in June 2024, a month before the celebration of Professor Wole Soyinka’s 90th birthday on July 13 2024.

    Ojo further explained that the film will be released first at the cinemas, after which it will go to a streaming platform across the world because the 90-year-old playwright is an international figure.

    In a recent chat, the filmmaker explained that it took over a year to film the biopic after meeting and getting the nod of the nonagenarian.

    Read Also: Jimi Solanke and Wole Soyinka

    “Prof is actually a difficult person to pin down. It took me over eight months to get to Professor Wole Soyinka, and when I eventually did, successfully, it took me a while to get his attention, to get some books, to sit him down, make him tell us some untold stories, like I said, you know,” Ojo began.

    Continuing, he said, “Then, I did my research, you know, aside from reading some of his books. I had a one-on-one conversation with him, I asked him questions, he gave me some books to read about him. He shared some vital information as well, which I scripted in the film, and yeah, that’s what you will see in the film.”

    The film, which set Ojo back with N400m, features Nollywood stars that include Lafeef Adedimeji, Segun Arinze, Jide Kosoko, Ibrahim Chatta, Bimbo Oshin, Femi Branch, and Saka amongst several others.

  • Jimi Solanke and Wole Soyinka

    Jimi Solanke and Wole Soyinka

    • By James Gibbs

    The death of Jimi Solanke on February 4, sent long-term observers of Nigeria’s cultural scene reflecting on the remarkable career of a much-loved stage personality. Among the appreciative articles published were several that drew on long and close acquaintance. One strand in the Solanke story concerns his work with Wole Soyinka that was particularly intense between 1960 and 1976. It may be said that he served an apprenticeship with Soyinka and offered him a masterpiece. During those years, Solanke acted in productions by Soyinka, accumulated relevant experience and grew as a performer. The young graduate of the Diploma Course in the School of Drama at Ibadan matured into a remarkable actor capable of taking on the most demanding roles, and equipped himself to become a versatile performer.

    Thanks to Soyinka’s publications, and other hard-copy sources, a sense of the growth of the performer can be sketched in. This brief investigation of part of Solanke’s formation might be given the title, From menacing Left Ear of State via the Fifth Aweri and the Ogbu of Gbu to the Elesin Oba and Beyond. Along the way, the biographical notes illuminate points of social history, theatre history and political history.

    Relevant ‘hard-copy’ sources for Solanke’s early work in my ‘occasional theatre archive’ include Soyinka’s Ibadan, the Penkelemesi Years, a Memoir: 1946-1965, newspapers and theatre programmes from the 1960 to 1976 period along with missed and mourned West Africa magazine. In Ibadan, the memoirist mentions Solanke as amongst the ‘fledglings’ involved in the staging of A Dance of the Forests, (1960).  

    Soyinka does not indicate the role Solanke took or the back-stage function he performed, but he includes him in the troupe and that inclusion provides a starting point. Soyinka’s list of members of the 1960 Masks, in which some names are glossed, provides an opportunity to note the company Solanke was keeping. 

     A Dance was staged by the 1960 Masks in Lagos and Ibadan in October, 1960 and those involved in the production included:

     Patrick Ozieh, a petroleum engineer; Olga Adeniyi-Jones, of a long-indigenised ‘expatriate’ line, and an accomplished contralto; Ralph Opara, Yemi Lijadu, Segun Olusola, all broadcasters; Funmi Asekun, of ample proportions, who soon abandoned stage appearances but continued to effectively ‘mother’ the company; Francesca Pereira, of an old Brazilian stock, a melifluous [sic] soprano … Gaius Anoka, a schoolteacher, as was Dapo Adelugba … Then the fledglings, Tunji Oyelana, Femi Fatoba, Sola Rhodes, Yewande Akinbo, Segun Sofowote, Femi Euba, Wale Ogunyemi, Jimi Solanke and others who would form the core of the new Orisun Theatre, less the ones that got away … (Ibadan, 69-70.)

    During the sixties, Soyinka complemented major stage productions with 1960 Masks by working in a revue format with a new drama group, Orisun Theatre, that, it was envisaged, would become professional. In the revues, performing irreverent, hard-hitting sketches, Solanke emerged as an actor and singer.  I have not found any references to his participation in the first Orisun Theatre revue, The Republican (March, 1963), but that may be because my documentation is particularly thin at that point. I can see that he was deeply involved when that show was resurrected, changed and re-staged – a typical Soyinka procedure – some six months later and just after Nigeria had become a republic.

    In the programme for The (New) Republican (November 1963), we read that the sketch ‘CRISIS!!!!!!!!!!!!’  was performed by ’Jimi Solanke, Yomi Obileye, Sonny Oti, Wale Ogunyemi, Tunji Oyelana, Eddy Fatoba, (and) Yemi Ogunbiyi’ – by, that is to say, a significant cohort of Orisun Theatre talent with some of whom Solanke was destined to have long, creative connections.  Of the several crises in Nigeria in the run up to the performance I think, following Frank Aig-Imoukhuede’s article in The Daily Express of March 11, 1964, that the one that prompted this sketch had to do with ‘food difficulties during a conference of African statesmen’. The newspaper reference includes: “But does the cook always end up with the ‘man in charge’ stamping on his unconscious body when it lies in a faint?” Perhaps significantly, no one is credited with the authorship of this sketch. Like some of the others, it may have been built on physical rather than verbal comedy.

    Moving on through the programme for The (New) Republican, we come to ‘ART CLASS’ that was credited to ‘WS’ and for which the programme provided relevant political background.  Briefly, the sketch commented on the creation of a fourth Region – the Mid-West – from parts of the Western Nigerian. Provinces were, it seems, amalgamated to form a new state with its capital in Benin City: three had become four.

     In ‘ART CLASS’, the challenges posed by this new administrative arrangement were subjected to scrutiny. The programme note on the sketch read as follows:

    Today’s theme – Trinity.

    The subtle imagination of our artists can be seen in the frescoes and public monuments where the principal of ‘A bit of each’ is rigidly upheld – shall we call it? – the artistic trinity. But a new problem has arisen – what happens to the numerous reliefs, plaques, etc. now that they are confronted with a new unit? Will they now evolve a quartet symbol? We offer them an obvious solution.

    This ‘obvious solution’ was acted out by “Yomi Obileye, Sola Akinsanya, Jimi Solanke, Wale Ogunyemi, (and) Elow Gabonal.”  That list includes some of ‘the usual suspects’, and it is helpful to know that Soyinka hovers behind ‘Elow Gabonal’ that he has used as both a nom de plume and, as here, a stage name. Soyinka worked with Solanke in various ways. On this occasion, they were in the same sketch.

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    Soyinka’s genius for writing revue sketches – and for inspiring and shaping the group improvisation that sometimes resulted in sketches – led to the staging of another revue:  Before the Blackout. This was put on in Lagos and Ibadan during March/ April 1964, and Solanke was deeply involved. For example, he featured with Tunji Oyelana in the performance of the songs – or ‘musical productions’ – that opened and closed some of the shows. These can be linked to ‘glees’ and established a connection between Orisun performances and expectations encouraged by Yoruba Travelling Theatre troupes.  As we might anticipate, given Soyinka’s determination to create engaged theatre, both ‘The Ballad of Traditional Philosophy’ and ‘The Ogbu of Gbu’, were overtly political. The latter, based on ‘The Vicar of Bray’, revealed the satirist’s affinity with the Eighteenth Century English traditions that he had responded to when an undergraduate at the University of Leeds (1954-57).

    Solanke also continued acting. A moment from a performance of the sketch, April Fools’ Ship is caught in a photograph in the published text of Before the Blackout (Orisun Acting Editions, n.d.) and shows an actor in flowing robes (presumably Tafewa Balewa) paddling a ‘boat’ inscribed ‘APRIL FOOLS’ SHIP, towards a second actor (Solanke?) wearing a hat with a feather stuck in the side – perhaps Festus Okotie-Eboh.  The picture is captioned:

    Scene from April Fools’ Ship, adventures of the Ministerial boat. Too ‘well-lined’ to be easily scuttled, it finally capsized from over-loading.

    The episode this sketch alludes to is the subject of a paragraph beginning on page 200 of the Methuen edition of Ibadan that is worth reading for the political background and for a vivid account of the feathers it ruffled. However, to return to Solanke, and his involvement in Soyinka productions is to find him a year or so after Before the Blackout playing the Left Ear of State in the premiere of Kongi’s Harvest (August, 1965).  That was a modest role but one that had to be played with silent menace. For the ‘revival’ of that play – resurrected, changed and re-staged (October, 1966), Solanke played the Fifth Aweri. The ‘fledgling’s’ promise had been recognised: he was entrusted with ‘lines’ and given a part with some complexity.

    After Kongi’s Harvest, Solanke name next jumps from my collection of cuttings some ten years later when, in 1976, he created the monumental role of Elesin Oba in Death and the King’s Horseman.  Thanks to Gerald Moore, who reviewed the University of Ife production for West Africa (10th January, 1977), we have a vivid account of Solanke’s outstanding portrayal.

    History was made by that production and that performance, and the ‘rest is history’ too. Some of it, like that reported above, is social history; some theatre history and some political history. It is to be hoped that appreciations of the life and work (the personal history) of Jimi Solanke will trace in greater detail the trajectory of the actor who, between 1963 and 1976, was transformed from a menacing Ear of State into a multi-faceted Elesin Oba and who still had nearly 50 years to live and create. Though the above draws on fragmentary evidence, it hints at the way the fledgling Jimi Solanke, grew his wings. By 1976, he was fully fledged and ready to soar on the winds.

    •Gibbs sent this piece from Bristol, England.

  • Insecurity: Soyinka calls for state of emergency in South West

    Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has called for declaration of state of emergency due to the security challenges in the South West Zone.

    Soyinka made the call on Thursday in Akure on the sidelines of the D.O Fagunwa Study Group International Conference held to celebrate his 85th birthday.

    The conference had as theme: ” Wole Soyinka, DO Fagunwa and the Yoruba Artistic Heritage.”

    The literary giant said that the most appropriate measure to take in view of the insecurity that had pervaded the whole of the South West was to declare a state of emergency across the region.

    “As regards the insecurity in the South West, there is an emergency. There should be a declaration of security emergency through out the land and measures taken accordingly.

    “There are many directions of security lapses, you know it here, especially in Ondo State, it is a calamity through out the whole nation. There is an emergency,” he said.

    The first African Nobel Laureate said the governors, especially those in the South West geo-political zone, must work assiduously toward tackling the menace of insecurity.

    Soyinka, however, expressed gratitude to Ondo State Government for celebrating his 85th birthday and the completion of the ‘Dome’ which was meant to celebrate art and culture.

    Gov. Oluwarotimi Akeredolu said the nation had allowed unreasonable competition, ethnicism, tribalism, corruption, political and economic ownership of the nation to slow down the pace of self-realisation.

    According to Akeredolu, in Africa, the challenge has moved largely from the legitimacy of governance institutions to its responsiveness to the need for a coordinated plan for cultural integration, economic development and general human capital development.

    Read Also: ‘Soyinka deserves highest national honour’

    The governor was, however, excited at the 85th birthday celebration of Soyinka, whom he described as his mentor and supporter.

    Akeredolu described Soyinka as a first class academic, playwright, poet, novelist, and great human condition activist.

    He said that Soyinka’s life was a lesson for public office holders because he had elevated the art of partisan living as the biggest ideal of social reclamation.

    “I join other well meaning Nigerians and the world at large to wish you, our great emblem of decency and justice, a happy 85th birthday!

    “I am fully convinced that your gathering here is another of those creative moments of rethinking our journey as a nation and our health as a society in search of its own civilisation.

    “I have read a bit of the book of proceeding of your last conference and I am convinced of the vigour, depth and clear headedness with which your Study Group addresses the myriad of challenges that the human mind faces in its quest for self reinvention and reclamation.

    “For all that we know, humanity is passing through some of its trying periods. Globally, definition of peace, progress, liberty and prosperity is interrogating the best of our civilisation today.

    “From leadership crisis which torments the sanest of public organisations to the fearful response of a traumatised followership, the narrative is clear: we must check and recheck the path on which we tread,” Akeredolu said.

  • July people in the news

    The month of July has more than its fair share of the birthdays of eminent Nigerian achievers who have made great contributions to their professions, craft, or calling.

    All protocols observed, I would have to start this eclectic roll with the Nobelist and media person extraordinary, Professor Wole Soyinka, who turned 85 on July 13. Ceremonies to mark the milestone were staged in various cities.  He was characteristically missing from all of them, except the one that brought young men and women together to meet and parley with him in his Ijegba forest home.

    Those students were fortunate.  Soyinka rarely attends such ceremonies. In 2009, I had the honour of presenting the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism Lecture to mark his 75th birthday. It was a packed house, but the man of the hour was nowhere in sight.

    He was in some secret location – the space lab of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in Pasadena, California, I suspect – undergoing a simulated space flight:  zero gravity, weightlessness, and all that, courtesy of a well-heeled friend.  The experience didn’t come cheap, he told me in an email, in case I was thinking it might be a good idea to check it out.

    Most of what we give others, Allan B Krueger, the late Princeton economist who studied happiness noted, are of little use and thoroughly disposable.  What counts most, according to that economist, is the gift of an experience, and the more exceptional the experience, the more valuable the gift.

    Soyinka’s friend must have thought long and hard about what to give the Nobelist as a birthday gift.  Cash?   That would be crass, insulting even. The choicest wines from Louis XIV’s cellar?  A better idea, to be sure, but the value diminishes when you share it with others, as Soyinka is sure to do.

    But simulated space flight?  How many people can claim to have experienced it?  Several hundreds, and among them, Soyinka may well be at that time the only African.

    I doubt whether he has described that experience in any of his numerous writings.  Perhaps he is saving it for another magnum opus.

    Congratulations, sir, and very many pleasant birthdays yet.

    There must be something in the Nigerian air and water highly conducive to the birth of would-be journalists and media people.  Just think of this constellation for a moment:   Lateef Kayode Jakande, Prince Henry Kayode Odukomaiya, and Olusegun Osoba.

    Jakande, dean of Nigerian editorialists, incisive columnist who plied his trade in the Nigerian Tribune under the pen name John West, newspaper editor, author and one of the most accomplished public figures in Nigeria’s history, turned 90 on July 23.

    The tributes were not in the least feigned. If they were also somewhat muted, it was mainly on account of the great man’s inexplicable refusal to quit the loathsome Sani Abacha’s cabinet even as Abacha had was tearing apart almost everything that Jakande had spent his lifetime promoting – freedom of the press, the rule of law, and democratic institutions.

    Former Daily Times editor Tony Momoh once told me in the run-up to the Second Republic that when Jakande was elected first civilian governor of Lagos State, he prayed fervently and frequently for his success.  Why? I asked him.  Why Jakande in particular?

    Because, Momoh said, Jakande’s success would put paid to the canard that journalists were only good at stirring things up.

    More than three decades later, Jakande’s tenure still stands as a benchmark for good governance.  If all he achieved in five years was the streamlining of the chaotic multi-tier system of primary and secondary education in Lagos State, that would have been achievement enough.  But he accomplished that only in his first year.

    Henry Kayode Odukomaiya, who turned 85 on July 10 is arguably the most versatile newspaperman Nigeria has produced in recent memory:  news reporter, feature writer, editorialist, production wizard, and newsapaper administrator. At the Daily Times where he was deeply but quietly revered (he operated under the shadow of the great Babatunde Jose) for his exacting standards.  At subsequent stops at the Concord Newspapers and the Champion, he left indelible footsteps.

    Olusegun Osoba, cracker-jack reporter, astute media manager, exemplar of the reporter as a judicious insider and nimble political actor and statesman, turned 80 on July 15 and launched his engrossing memoirs Battlelines:  Adventures in Journalism and Politics, which I had the privilege of reading in manuscript.  It lives up to its author’s reputation for getting the inside dope, for fast footwork, and for counter-punching.

    Osoba was a master of networking well before the term came into popular use.  Having learned early that, in Nigeria, the decisions on who gets what, when and how, are taken at night, he made himself a nocturnal operator.  That kept him abreast of the decision-makers and ahead of everybody else.

    His knowledge of how the system functions and his vast network of contacts helped catapult him to the top at the Daily Times ultimately and, en route, turn the Daily Sketch in Ibadan and The Nigerian Herald in Ilorin into newspapers of national reckoning.

    One of the things I found most revealing in the book was the plot to dump Osoba and replace him as chief executive at the Daily Times with Prof Alfred Opubor, who had at one and the same time served as head of the Department of Mass Communication at the University of Lagos, chair of the board of the News Agency of Nigeria, and chair of the Bendel Newspapers, publishers of the Observer.

    Osoba worked the phones, did his nocturnal rounds, and foiled it. He was in my judgment a better fit for the job anyway.

    Though strictly not a media person, Ajibola Ogunshola is deservedly honoured as such.  He would not  kowtow to military president Ibrahim Babangida and Sani Abacha in their craven bid to emasculate the Independent press.  He turned around the fortunes of the Punch.  He drew up and enforced the ethical  principles on which it is grounded.

    But presiding at the Punch was a detour for the pre-eminent African actuary, who turned 75 on July 14?  His 70th was a class act that bore his accustomed painstaking attention to detail. Unfortunately he lost his daughter Yetunde, a person of remarkable intellectual and professional attainments and of vast promise to a rare form of cancer on the eve of his 75th birthday.

    My condolences again, Ba’royin.

    For entrepreneurial chutzpah and innovativeness, it would be hard to beat Nduka “The Duke” Obaigbena, the Thisday publisher who turned 60 on July 14.   Who but Obaigbena would have sent to whomsoever it may concern an advisory that it would be a good idea to buy media space and airtime to congratulate him on the occasion?

    But this may just be yet another tale by those from whom Obaigbena commands respect and dread in equal measure.

    The reader will have noticed, if not pardoned, my partiality to media people even in this necessarily eclectic outing, as if they alone qualify as eminent achievers among those born in July who have made distinguished contributions to their profession, craft, or calling.   Not in the least.

    I am thinking of our pre-eminent cardiologist, erudite scholar and university Administrator, racounteur and wit, Professor Oladipo Akinkugbe, who turned 85 on July 10.  Equally versed in the humanities and the sciences, and a gifted writer to boot, he is emblematic of the cultivated man in the finest sense of that term, a savant.   It makes sense, then, that bird-watching is his hobby.

    Come up with some bon mot, and he would instantly tell you its source. I once struggled in his presence to recall the name of the English man of the nobility quoted to have said, by way of advice to a young man about to get married:  “Don’t.”

    Professor Akinkugbe came up with it effortlessly.  In vain do I struggle to recall it even now.

    I am also thinking of his younger namesake and fellow laureate of the National Order of Merit, Professor Oladipupo Adamolekun, distinguished international civil servant, who turned 75 on July 21.

    As an undergraduate at the University of Ibadan in the 60s, he was one of the brave souls who undertook to distribute copies of The Tribune which the beleaguered authorities in Western Nigeria considered seditious through.  Today, he writes an occasional column for Vanguard Newspapers.

    There has got to be some printer’s ink in his DNA.

    To all July people named here and those inadvertently omitted, a belated happy birthday.

     

    • For comments, send SMS to 08111813080

  • Soyinka: I didn’t say herdsmen have eroded Buhari’s achievements

    Nobel Laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka on Tuesday denied saying the herdsmen’s challenge has eroded President Muhammadu Buhari’s achievements.

    He was reacting to Monday’s report in The Nation.

    His statement reads: “I denounce, in very strong terms, the report in The Nation of July 15, 2019, regarding my exchange with school pupils who visited me in Abeokuta, on Sunday, July 14, as part of the organised events on my 85th Birthday. I am appalled that such a twisted and unprofessional account could be disseminated by a paper that has earned itself a high level of public regard, not only for its reporting, but for the galaxy of perceptive contributors on national affairs and other issues of public interest. It is a gross disservice to truth and conscience, and the pursuit of the journalistic profession as a whole.

    “At no time did I utter the words attributed to me by that paper, which sought to cite the plague of violence by nomadic herdsmen for the “erosion of Buhari’s achievements”. Indeed, at no time in that exchange did the “achievements” of Nigeria’s current government – real or fictitious – come under consideration. The headlining is especially gratuitous, fictitious, and dishonest.

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    “For the avoidance of doubt, a school pupil had requested my assessment of ALL past Nigerian governments. In order to enable these pupils develop as objective, all-round critics, constantly aware of the context in which opinions should be formed, I began by warning them that governance is a difficult undertaking. I went on to add that governing a complex nation space known as Nigeria is especially challenging. The Nation’s report has mischievously detached, then reattached that comment elsewhere in order to introduce achievements of his or her own conceiving. For good measure, comments on rampaging herdsmen were similarly displaced and relocated to provide Buhari’s government alibi for failures.  This is crude, mind-boggling, propaganda, unworthy of any but suborned professionals.

    “Such outrageous ploy is no different from the conduct of social media commentators – especially at election time – who, lacking the courage to propagate their personal opinions, impudently steal the identities of others – mine being a favourite — including pasted photographs, in order to participate in public discourse.  It is sad to see this unprincipled conduct being adopted by the print media.”

  • Soyinka: Ezekwesili, others call for value-based democracy

    Obiageli Ezekwesili, Senior Economic Advisor, Africa Economic Development Policy Initiative (AEDPI) along with other speakers at the 11th Wole Soyinka Centre Media Lecture Series, held on Saturday, 13 July 2019 at MUSON Centre, Onikan, Lagos, have called on Nigerians to insist on values in determining those who become their leaders and how the polity is administered.

    The former Nigerian Minister of Education and Minister of Solid Minerals made this call at the lecture held in commemoration of the 85th birthday of Wole Soyinka, Africa’s first Nobel Laureate in Literature and Grand Patron of the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism.

    According to Ezekwesili, “If we are lacking in the building of those values and the shaping of those values, then we will have to wait endlessly. The people who should win our vote should be people with values and character. Age should not just be the determinant of the people who should lead us; it should be age plus values. Citizens have abandoned politics in the hands of politicians. So, our political parties have become the venture of political entrepreneurs. It cannot work that way. Political parties are supposed to be the government in waiting.”

    Contributing to the lecture’s theme, “Rethinking Credible Elections, Accountable Democracy and Good Governance in Nigeria”, other speakers including Oluwole Osaze-Uzzi, Director, Voter Education and Publicity, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC); Amina Salihu, Senior Programme Officer, MacArthur Foundation; Gbenga Sesan, Executive Director, Paradigm Initiative; and Rotimi Sankore, Editorial Board Chair, Nigeria Info Radio Group were also on hand to contribute to the lecture. Oluwole Osaze-Uzzi, Director, Voter Education and Publicity, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) explained that the citizens should go beyond thinking and rethinking elections, to acting to see the change they seek.

    The crucial issue of gender balance was introduced to the discussion by Amina Salihu, Senior Programme Officer, MacArthur Foundation who called for gender based affirmative action in governance. She maintained that women have been “minoritised” because although they are half the population their voices have been diminished. Amina Salihu used the opportunity of the lecture to push for naming and shaming of sex offenders through the launch of a national sex offenders’ register which she assured will happen shortly.

    Speaking of appropriate technology for elections, Gbenga Sesan, Executive Director, Paradigm Initiative, explained that technology hardly needs to be sophisticated and expensive. According to Gbenga Sesan, INEC should have sent text messages to its over 80 million registered voters when the 2019 election was postponed just a few hours before the 2019 Presidential elections. He charged the Commission to take advantage of technology to educate the technology savvy new generation of voters including the additional 20 million plus youth who will be eligible to vote by 2020.

    Rotimi Sankore, Editorial Board Chair, Nigeria Info Radio Group, said the role of the media is to report factually and seek to educate and solve problems rather than add to it. According to him, the media needs to engage with data and evidence. Rotimi Sankore cited examples relating to conflicts in the northern parts of the country, health, education and the Rural Grazing Area (RUGA), of how the lack of in-depth reporting, verification of facts and deployment of evidence by the media have denied the people the opportunity to engage issues appropriately.

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    In his opening remark, Ropo Sekoni, the Board Chair of the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ), organisers of the programme, mentioned that the lecture’s theme was topical given the insecurity that permeates the system. Kole Shettima, Director of the Africa Office of the MacArthur Foundation, who supported the lecture expressed the foundation’s excitement to be part of the occasion. He appreciated the WSCIJ for improving the lives of the citizens by making government accountable through investigative reporting

    The son of the celebrant, Olaokun Soyinka, thanked the WSCIJ on behalf of the family for the consistency that has brought the lecture to its 11th edition and its focus on promoting the culture of investigative reporting. He observed that Soyinka’s struggle to hold power accountable and fight against impunity are still relevant today and admonished young people to draw the battle line between those who are prodemocracy and does who are not rather than between the young and the old.

    Motunrayo Alaka, the organisation’s Coordinator appreciated the speakers and panellists, the WSCIJ board, WSCIJ staff, her family, the media, Wole Soyinka and his children. She mentioned that it has taken the support of all the relevant stakeholders to keep the lecture on the same date, Wole Soyinka’s birthday for ten years.

    The lecture was opened by a viewing of a documentary which chronicled the life, writings and the crucial role Wole Soyinka played for the emergence of Nigeria. It was moderated by Stephanie Busari, Supervising Producer, CNN Africa. It was attended by journalists, policy makers, representatives of pressure groups and non-governmental organisations, students and other members of the public.

     

  • Welcome yesterday

    The imminent re-introduction of History as a stand-alone subject, at the start of the 2019-2020 academic session in September, could not have come at a better time. Try driving without rear mirrors; and see how near-impossible such an exercise would be. That is how impossible it is to build a fractious nation like Nigeria, without history. This change of policy also underscores the alarming lack of introspection that often goes with putting in place public policy, this time the de-stressing of history. It is good History is back, courtesy of a Federal Ministry of Education directive that it be returned.

    Still, it is only fair to note that History was never really out of the curriculum. It was only treated as an outcast. At the basic and secondary stages, it was diffused with subjects like Civics and Government. At the tertiary level, it suddenly became infra-dig for universities to offer History, without highfalutin-sounding sidekicks like “International Relations”, and “Strategic Studies”.

    The moot point seemed to be that History belonged to the past, and it must stay that way. Some even posit it is the age of science and technology, in which History had become an anachronism – what hubris! How do you even begin to master your environment, and using science to forge the requisite technology to boss that environment, without knowing about and mastering your past, which History teaches?

    Indeed, Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, put his finger on the matter, with his outrage, expressed in a 2016 press conference: “History is so fundamental to self-knowledge, identity, and understanding where you came from; and therefore where you might be headed. So, how can a subject such as History be excised from the curriculum of any school?” he queried. “Can you imagine that? History of all subjects? What is wrong with History? Or maybe I should ask: what is wrong with some people’s head?” Again, that was a sharp rebuke, of the seeming lack of deep introspection, while that curriculum was being designed.

    The present Federal Government has done well with this laudable move. But while even correcting this obvious flaw, it is imperative to stress the need for vibrant dialogue between policy makers, represented by government at all levels, and education technocrats, who draw up the curricula. It is not enough to just call in education experts, decree the latest government policy and ask these professionals to draw out a document that fits into the new government thinking. It is far better and much more productive to engage in serious meeting of minds over the proposals, go into vigorous debates and first establish if the new policy thrust was worth the while.

    If that had been done, the Basic Education curriculum of 2007, which eventually took off in the 2009/2010 academic session, would have had a better input across the board. If that had been the case, toning down the teaching and learning of History would have been unnecessary. The 2007 revised Basic Education curriculum aimed to correct the poor focus on human capacity development and poverty eradication, in the old curriculum. But how are these goals and the learning of History contradictory?  Indeed, how do you achieve material poverty eradication by first eradicating intellectual wealth, about your own being and environment, that History richly offers?

    Education experts must come to the policy party as active partners, not passive recipients of diktats, only buoyed by the perks and allowances such sessions offer. They must vigorously engage the government of the day, share knowledge and earn respect. That way, both parties would come out with the best possible mixes. That would make the curriculum well and truly rich; and the pupil-beneficiaries, well and truly blessed.

    With the re-introduction of History as stand-alone, the government must put in place adequate plans to ensure History teachers in the system are freed to do the job. The new policy should also gear universities to produce fresh History teachers, even if the overall focus is on science and technology.

    Welcome yesterday.  That is the only way today is sure; and tomorrow is re-assured. Welcome History, to the school curriculum.

  • Eventful decade of cultural exchanges for Kongi at 85

    Inspired by Prof Wole Soyinka’s humanist principles, Open Door Series ten years ago initiated the annual Wole Soyinka International Cultural Exchange, (WSICE) to mark the Nobel laureate’s 75th birthday anniversary. This year, to mark a decade of these celebrations and the 85th birthday of Soyinka (July 13), WSICE programmes will be flagged off on Friday July 12.  It will run till July 15. Since its maiden edition ten years ago, the exchange has featured over 10,000 secondary students and more than 200 local and international resource persons.

    The WSICE is anchored around Soyinka’s humanist principles as enunciated in his body of works and his consistent patriotic engagement with the socio-political and cultural affairs of Nigeria, Africa and the world at large.

    July 2019 is, indeed, a landmark for the WSICE project primarily motivated by the life and career of the quintessential artiste – dramatist, poet, theatre director, teacher, culture scholar and public intellectual.  Clocking 85 is as well a milestone in the life of the illustrious son of Africa; distinguished father of Nigerian and African arts and cultural heritage, who is also an iconic global citizen.

    Co-Executive Producer of the WSICE, Teju Kareem, said “the OpenDoorSeries/WSICE is not to be misconstrued as a mere celebration of Wole Soyinka’s date of birth — the man is not, in anyway, really interested in such vanities as staging a party to celebrate his yearly birthday — but the project is designed to celebrate the quintessential artiste as an eminent promoter of the good of humanity.

    And especially to set his exemplary philosophies and visionary ideals as promoted in his works and lifestyle as veritable examples for peoples across race, gender, age, religious and political persuasions, especially the young ones, who need models they can relate to.”

    This year’s edition will also mark a grand return of the OpenDoorSeries/WSICE to Lagos, where its maiden edition was staged at the MUSON Centre, Onikan Lagos. Also, as was the design at its birth, the project will extend its programming beyond its traditional base in Abeokuta, Ogun State.

    While the mostly students/youth-focused programmes like essay writing, workshop, youth creative expressions (Do Your Own Thing, (DYOT) etc. would still take place in Abeokuta, which had served as traditional base of the programme in the past eight years; the mentoring session will hold in Akure, Ondo State. The adult session – advocacy session, drama, dance and poetry performances, film screening, book presentations etc. would hold at the Freedom Park in Lagos.

    Kareem stated: “The resolve to take the 10th anniversary celebration to the Freedom Park, which remains the topmost hub for artistic productions and creative expressions in the country, is partly in recognition of Wole Soyinka’s status as the patron saint of the Park, and of creativity in Nigeria and Africa.”

    The renowned theatre designer, scenographer, and Chief Executive Officer ZMirage Multimedia Company, promised that this year’s edition will unveil the future characteristics and direction of the project, which he co-founded with theatre director, Prof Segun Ojewuyi, of the United States-based GlobalNewHaven.

  • Soyinka, Ooni to Nigerians: defend your ancestral lands

    NIGERIA cannot survive another civil war, Nobel laureate Prof. Wole Soyinka and frontline monarch Ooni of Ife, Oba Adeyeye Ogunwusi, have warned.

    They called on the authorities to arrest what they see as the prevailing drift into “a dysfunctional state on multiple levels of citizenship, community belonging, security and productive opportunities”.

    In a communiqué they issued at the end of a meeting at the weekend, the duo counselled the government on ensuring co-existence amongst Nigerians.

    The communique was issued after a visit by the royal father to Soyinka in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital.

    They said that solutions must be found to the challenges threatening national cohesion and survival.

    According to the literary icon and the royal father, efforts must be made to douse the tension over the suspended Ruga settlements. The government has suspended the project, saying the implementation was inconsistent with its plan.

    The communique decried a situation where some groups consider themselves especially privileged and above the law.

    It states: “We have in mind destructive forms of social transactions that characterize groups such as nomadic cattle herdsmen, and their umbrella groupings in the nature of Miyetti Allah.

    “We confess ourselves increasingly distressed and appalled that the hitherto harmonious cohabitation, even routine collaboration, among the productive arms of society that Nigerians have taken for granted even from pre-colonial times, have deteriorated to unprecedented levels of barbarity, contempt for human lives and a defiant trampling on the civic entitlements of other productive vectors, such as farmers, the providers of both food and cash crops.

    “This abhorrent, yet consistent pattern of sectarian, and homicidal arrogance is obviously not merely counter-productive but inhuman, criminal and divisive.”

    Read Also: Soyinka: cattle colonies can set Nigeria on fire

    Soyinka and Oba Ogunwusi said the recent ultimatum delivered by a sectarian order to President Muhammadu Buhari to set up the so-called Ruga cattle settlements across the entire nation within a stipulated time, despite national outcry, should be acknowledged as their entitlement under the law that grants them freedom of expression.

    Given the current state of affairs, the eminent citizens called on Nigerians across the states to defend the sanctity of their ancestral lands, because such birthright has never been annulled, “not even under colonial occupation”.

    They said those who indulge in what they described as “internal colonisation project are backward, primitive and underdeveloped minds that have failed to overcome delusions in the antiquated belief in sectarian dominion as the key to social existence”.

    Soyinka and Oba Ogunwusi urged Nigerians to convoke a series of frank encounters, across various interests and concerns, to debate and determine the future structure of their nation, most especially with a view to attaining a genuine, decentralised functional governance arrangement.

    They added: “We propose a structure that enables the constitutive parts to progress at their own pace, determine their own priorities, and encourage creative exploitation of their resources for the benefit of their peoples.  Such encounters will simultaneously address the numerous anomalies that plague the nation – from youth unemployment, infrastructural decay, insecurity and ethical collapse, to the untenable aspects of the protocols of the present constitution that supposedly bond the nation as one.

    “We consider it a primary imperative of nation existence that the constitutive parts of the nation take steps to preserve and enhance their distinct cultural identities, including tested and relevant pre-colonial values, their spiritual apprehension of phenomena and worship, all without detriment to the principles and ideals of mutual co-existence.

    “To this end, we undertake to create state-of-the-art Ethnic Museums for our people both at home and in the Diaspora, where present and future generations can access their histories and cultures vividly, as living expressions of their very humanity, not simply as relics of eras vanished forever or irrelevant to the present.

    “We pledge ourselves to join hands with others in fashioning a realistic, functional, and sustainable charter of development for the welfare and progress of our peoples, culturally, economically, and spiritually, where every individual freely obtains access to the means of his or her chosen path of development, and the fulfilling knowledge of valuable contribution to the well-being and advance of the overall community, and of humanity.”

  • Aircraft seat controversy: My story, by Soyinka

    NOBEL Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka on Saturday  broke his silence on the aircraft seat controversy which has gone viral on social media.

    He said in a statement in Lagos that there was no truth in suggestions that he resisted doing the needful once he realized that he occupied somebody else’s seat.

    Soyinka, in what appears to be an attempt to correct misconceptions about the episode, said: “I don’t know how much airlines succeed in raising for their charity drives through those envelopes they distribute to passengers into which their captive donors are exhorted to deposit their loose change before disembarking.

    “Such monies are then distributed to worthy causes all over the world, especially in the pursuit of health.

    Read Also: Soyinka cautions govt on Obasanjo’s comments

    “What I am convinced of is that they would generate a hundred times more if they were more creative.

    “For instance, they could impose a fine on passengers who take the wrong seat on boarding, even for a second.

    “One can only rejoice in the thought of such benefits to humanity in its efforts to eradicate all kinds of diseases, especially malnutrition, and ensure the supply of nutrients that prevent the premature onset of brain impairment.”

    “Those who permit themselves to be persuaded, even for one second that I, Wole Soyinka, having wrongly identified a seat number like millions of travellers all the time, and all over the world, would then attempt to consolidate the error in any form, through act, word, or gesture, qualify to be the first beneficiaries of this vastly improved humanitarian policy.”