Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde "Wole" Soyinka CFR (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "wide cultural perspective and... poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence", the first sub-Saharan African to win the Prize in literature.
Early life
Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta, Nigeria. In 1954, he attended Government College in Ibadan, and subsequently University College Ibadan and the University of Leeds in England. After studying in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its campaign for independence from British colonial rule. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967, during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years, for volunteering to be a non-government mediating actor.
Soyinka has been a strong critic of successive Nigerian (and African at large) governments, especially the country's many military dictators, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of Soyinka's writing is concerned with "the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it". During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria on a motorcycle via the Benin border. Abacha later proclaimed a death sentence against him "in absentia". With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned there.
From 1975 to 1999, Soyinka had been Professor of Comparative literature (1975–1999) at Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ifẹ̀, and in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. While in the United States, he taught at Cornell University as Goldwin Smith professor for African Studies and Theatre Arts from 1988 to 1991 and then at Emory University, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. He has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and has served as scholar-in-residence at New York University's Institute of African American Affairs and at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. He has also taught at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Yale, and was a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Duke University in 2008.
In December 2017, Soyinka received the Europe Theatre Prize in the "Special Prize" category, awarded to someone who has "contributed to the realization of cultural events that promote understanding and the exchange of knowledge between peoples".
Literary work
A descendant of the rulers of Isara, Soyinka was born the second of his parents' seven children, in the city of Abẹokuta, Nigeria. His siblings were Atinuke "Tinu" Aina Soyinka, Femi Soyinka, Yeside Soyinka, Omofolabo "Folabo" Ajayi-Soyinka and Kayode Soyinka. His younger sister Folashade Soyinka died on her first birthday. His father, Samuel Ayodele Soyinka (whom he called S.A. or "Essay" ), was an Anglican minister and the headmaster of St. Peters School in Abẹokuta. Having solid family connections, the elder Soyinka was a cousin of the Odemo, or King, of Isara-Remo Samuel Akinsanya, a founding father of Nigeria. Soyinka's mother, Grace Eniola Soyinka (née Jenkins-Harrison) (whom he dubbed the "Wild Christian" ), owned a shop in the nearby market. She was a political activist within the women's movement in the local community. She was also Anglican. As much of the community followed indigenous Yorùbá religious tradition, Soyinka grew up in a religious atmosphere of syncretism, with influences from both cultures. He was raised in a religious family, attending church services and singing in the choir from an early age; however, Soyinka himself became an atheist later in life. His father's position enabled him to get electricity and radio at home. He writes extensively about his childhood in his memoir Aké: The Years of Childhood (1981).
His mother was one of the most prominent members of the influential Ransome-Kuti family: she was the granddaughter of Rev. Canon J. J. Ransome-Kuti as the only daughter of his first daughter Anne Lape Iyabode Ransome-Kuti, and was therefore a niece to Olusegun Azariah Ransome-Kuti, Oludotun Ransome-Kuti and niece in-law to Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti. Among Soyinka's first cousins once removed were the musician Fela Kuti, the human rights activist Beko Ransome-Kuti, politician Olikoye Ransome-Kuti and activist Yemisi Ransome-Kuti. His second cousins include musicians Femi Kuti and Seun Kuti, and dancer Yeni Kuti. His younger brother Femi Soyinka became a medical doctor and a university professor.
In 1940, after attending St. Peter's Primary School in Abeokuta, Soyinka went to Abeokuta Grammar School, where he won several prizes for literary composition. In 1946 he was accepted by Government College in Ibadan, at that time one of Nigeria's elite secondary schools. After finishing his course at Government College in 1952, he began studies at University College Ibadan (1952–54), affiliated with the University of London. He studied English literature, Greek, and Western history. Among his lecturers was Molly Mahood, a British literary scholar. In the year 1953–54, his second and last at University College, Soyinka began work on Keffi's Birthday Treat, a short radio play for Nigerian Broadcasting Service that was broadcast in July 1954. While at university, Soyinka and six others founded the Pyrates Confraternity, an anti-corruption and justice-seeking student organisation, the first confraternity in Nigeria.
Later in 1954, Soyinka relocated to England, where he continued his studies in English literature, under the supervision of his mentor Wilson Knight at the University of Leeds (1954–57). He met numerous young, gifted British writers. Before defending his B.A. degree, Soyinka began publishing and working as editor for a satirical magazine called The Eagle; he wrote a column on academic life, in which he often criticised his university peers.
Early career
After graduating with an upper second-class degree, Soyinka remained in Leeds and began working on an MA. He intended to write new works combining European theatrical traditions with those of his Yorùbá cultural heritage. His first major play, The Swamp Dwellers (1958), was followed a year later by The Lion and the Jewel, a comedy that attracted interest from several members of London's Royal Court Theatre. Encouraged, Soyinka moved to London, where he worked as a play reader for the Royal Court Theatre. During the same period, both of his plays were performed in Ibadan. They dealt with the uneasy relationship between progress and tradition in Nigeria.
In 1957, his play The Invention was the first of his works to be produced at the Royal Court Theatre. At that time his only published works were poems such as "The Immigrant" and "My Next Door Neighbour", which were published in the Nigerian magazine Black Orpheus. This was founded in 1957 by the German scholar Ulli Beier, who had been teaching at the University of Ibadan since 1950.
Soyinka received a Rockefeller Research Fellowship from University College in Ibadan, his alma mater, for research on African theatre, and he returned to Nigeria. After its fifth issue (November 1959), Soyinka replaced Jahnheinz Jahn to become coeditor for the literary periodical Black Orpheus (its name derived from a 1948 essay by Jean-Paul Sartre, "Orphée Noir", published as a preface to Anthologie de la nouvelle poésie nègre et malgache, edited by Léopold Senghor). He produced his new satire, The Trials of Brother Jero in the dining-hall at Mellanby Hall of University College Ibadan, in April 1960. That year, his work A Dance of The Forest, a biting criticism of Nigeria's political elites, won a contest that year as the official play for Nigerian Independence Day. On 1 October 1960, it premiered in Lagos as Nigeria celebrated its sovereignty. The play satirizes the fledgling nation by showing that the present is no more a golden age than was the past. Also in 1960, Soyinka established the "Nineteen-Sixty Masks", an amateur acting ensemble to which he devoted considerable time over the next few years.
Soyinka wrote the first full-length play produced on Nigerian television. Entitled My Father's Burden and directed by Segun Olusola, the play was featured on the Western Nigeria Television (WNTV) on 6 August 1960. Soyinka published works satirising the "Emergency" in the Western Region of Nigeria, as his Yorùbá homeland was increasingly occupied and controlled by the federal government. The political tensions arising from recent post-colonial independence eventually led to a military coup and civil war (1967–70).
With the Rockefeller grant, Soyinka bought a Land Rover, and he began travelling throughout the country as a researcher with the Department of English Language of the University College in Ibadan. In an essay of the time, he criticised Leopold Senghor's Négritude movement as a nostalgic and indiscriminate glorification of the black African past that ignores the potential benefits of modernisation. He is often quoted as having said, "A tiger doesn't proclaim his tigritude, he pounces." But in fact, Soyinka wrote in a 1960 essay for the Horn: "the duiker will not paint 'duiker' on his beautiful back to proclaim his duikeritude; you'll know him by his elegant leap." In Death and the King's Horsemen he states: "The elephant trails no tethering-rope; that king is not yet crowned who will peg an elephant."
In December 1962, Soyinka's essay "Towards a True Theater" was published in Transition Magazine. He began teaching with the Department of English Language at Obafemi Awolowo University in Ifẹ. He discussed current affairs with "négrophiles", and on several occasions openly condemned government censorship. At the end of 1963, his first feature-length movie, Culture in Transition, was released. In 1965, his book The Interpreters, "a complex but also vividly documentary novel", was published in London by André Deutsch.
That December, together with scientists and men of theatre, Soyinka founded the Drama Association of Nigeria. In 1964 he also resigned his university post, as a protest against imposed pro-government behaviour by the authorities. A few months later, in 1965, he was arrested for the first time, charged with holding up a radio station at gunpoint (as described in his 2006 memoir You Must Set Forth at Dawn) and replacing the tape of a recorded speech by the premier of Western Nigeria with a different tape containing accusations of election malpractice. Soyinka was released after a few months of confinement, as a result of protests by the international community of writers. This same year he wrote two more dramatic pieces: Before the Blackout and the comedy Kongi's Harvest. He also wrote The Detainee, a radio play for the BBC in London. His play The Road premiered in London at the Commonwealth Arts Festival, opening on 14 September 1965, at the Theatre Royal. At the end of the year, he was promoted to headmaster and senior lecturer in the Department of English Language at University of Lagos.
Soyinka's political speeches at that time criticised the cult of personality and government corruption in African dictatorships. In April 1966, his play Kongi's Harvest was produced in revival at the World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal. The Road was awarded the Grand Prix. In June 1965, his play The Trials of Brother Jero was produced at the Hampstead Theatre Club in London, and in December 1966 The Lion and the Jewel was staged at the Royal Court Theatre.
Civil war and imprisonment
After becoming Chair of Drama at the University of Ibadan, Soyinka became more politically active. Following the military coup of January 1966, he secretly met with Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the military governor in the Southeastern Nigeria in an effort to avert the Nigerian civil war.
He was later arrested by federal authorities and imprisoned for 22 months, as civil war ensued between the Federal government of Nigeria and the secessionist state of Biafra. He wrote a significant body of poems and notes criticising the Nigerian government while in prison.
Despite his imprisonment, his play The Lion and The Jewel was produced in Accra, Ghana, in September 1967. In November that year, The Trials of Brother Jero and The Strong Breed were produced in the Greenwich Mews Theatre in New York City. Soyinka also published a collection of his poetry, Idanre and Other Poems, which was inspired by his visit to the sanctuary of the Yorùbá deity Ogun, whom he regards as his "companion" deity, kindred spirit, and protector.
In 1968, the Negro Ensemble Company in New York produced Kongi's Harvest. While still imprisoned, Soyinka translated from Yoruba a fantastical novel by his compatriot D. O. Fagunwa, entitled The Forest of a Thousand Demons: A Hunter's Saga.
Two films about this period of his life have been announced: The Man Died, directed by Awam Amkpa, a feature film based on a fictionalized form of Soyinka's 1973 prison memoirs of the same name; and Ebrohimie Road, written and directed by Kola Tubosun, which takes a look at the house where Soyinka lived between 1967 when he arrived back in Ibadan to take on the directorship of the School of Drama and 1972 when he left for exile after being released from prison.
Release and literary production
In October 1969, when the civil war came to an end, amnesty was proclaimed, and Soyinka and other political prisoners were freed. For the first few months after his release, Soyinka stayed at a friend's farm in southern France, where he sought solitude. He wrote The Bacchae of Euripides (1969), a reworking of the Pentheus myth. He soon published in London a book of poetry, Poems from Prison. At the end of the year, he returned to his office as Chair of Drama at Ibadan.
In 1970, he produced the play Kongi's Harvest, while simultaneously adapting it as a film of the same title. In June 1970, he finished another play, called Madmen and Specialists. Together with the group of 15 actors of Ibadan University Theatre Art Company, he went on a trip to the United States, to the Eugene O'Neill Memorial Theatre Center in Waterford, Connecticut, where his latest play premiered. It gave them all experience with theatrical production in another English-speaking country.
In 1971, his poetry collection A Shuttle in the Crypt was published. Madmen and Specialists was produced in Ibadan that year. Soyinka travelled to Paris to take the lead role as Patrice Lumumba, the murdered first Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo, in the production of Murderous Angels, Conor Cruise O'Brien's play about the Congo Crisis.
In April 1971, concerned about the political situation in Nigeria, Soyinka resigned from his duties at the University in Ibadan, and began years of voluntary exile. In July in Paris, excerpts from his well-known play The Dance of The Forests were performed.
In 1972, his novel Season of Anomy and his Collected Plays were both published by Oxford University Press. His powerful autobiographical work The Man Died, a collection of notes from prison, was also published that year. He was awarded an Honoris Causa doctorate by the University of Leeds in 1973. In the same year the National Theatre, London, commissioned and premiered the play The Bacchae of Euripides, and his plays Camwood on the Leaves and Jero's Metamorphosis were also first published. From 1973 to 1975, Soyinka spent time on scientific studies. He spent a year as a visiting fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge University 1973–74 and wrote Death and the King's Horseman, which had its first reading at Churchill College.
In 1974, his Collected Plays, Volume II was issued by Oxford University Press. In 1975, Soyinka was promoted to the position of editor for Transition Magazine, which was based in the Ghanaian capital of Accra, where he moved for some time. He used his columns in the magazine to criticise the "negrophiles" (for instance, his article "Neo-Tarzanism: The Poetics of Pseudo-Transition" ) and military regimes. He protested against the military junta of Idi Amin in Uganda. After the political turnover in Nigeria and the subversion of Gowon's military regime in 1975, Soyinka returned to his homeland and resumed his position as Chair of Comparative Literature at the University of Ife.
In 1976, he published his poetry collection Ogun Abibiman, as well as a collection of essays entitled Myth, Literature and the African World. In these, Soyinka explores the genesis of mysticism in African theatre and, using examples from both European and African literature, compares and contrasts the cultures. He delivered a series of guest lectures at the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana in Legon. In October, the French version of The Dance of The Forests was performed in Dakar, while in Ife, his play Death and The King's Horseman premièred.
In 1977, Opera Wọnyọsi, his adaptation of Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera, was staged in Ibadan. In 1979 he both directed and acted in Jon Blair and Norman Fenton's drama The Biko Inquest, a work based on the life of Steve Biko, a South African student and human rights activist who was beaten to death by apartheid police forces. In 1981 Soyinka published his autobiographical work Aké: The Years of Childhood, which won a 1983 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.
Soyinka founded another theatrical group called the Guerrilla Unit. Its goal was to work with local communities in analysing their problems and to express some of their grievances in dramatic sketches. In 1983 his play Requiem for a Futurologist had its first performance at the University of Ife. In July, one of his musical projects, the Unlimited Liability Company, issued a long-playing record entitled I Love My Country, on which several prominent Nigerian musicians played songs composed by Soyinka. In 1984, he directed the film Blues for a Prodigal, which was screened at the University of Ife. His A Play of Giants was produced the same year.
During the years 1975–84, Soyinka was more politically active. At the University of Ife, his administrative duties included the security of public roads. He criticized the corruption in the government of the democratically elected President Shehu Shagari. When he was replaced by the army general Muhammadu Buhari, Soyinka was often at odds with the military. In 1984, a Nigerian court banned his 1972 book The Man Died: Prison Notes. In 1985, his play Requiem for a Futurologist was published in London by Rex Collings.
Picture 3) Wole Soyinka on his matriculation day at the University College, Ibadan.
Picture 4) 18 year old Wole Soyinka as a freshman at the University College, Ibadan.
Soyinka was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, becoming the first African laureate. He was described as one "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence". Reed Way Dasenbrock writes that the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Soyinka is "likely to prove quite controversial and thoroughly deserved". He also notes that "it is the first Nobel Prize awarded to an African writer or to any writer from the 'new literatures' in English that have emerged in the former colonies of the British Empire." His Nobel acceptance speech, "This Past Must Address Its Present", was devoted to South African freedom-fighter Nelson Mandela. Soyinka's speech was an outspoken criticism of apartheid and the politics of racial segregation imposed on the majority by the National South African government. In 1986, he received the Agip Prize for Literature.
In 1988, his collection of poems Mandela's Earth, and Other Poems was published, while in Nigeria another collection of essays, entitled Art, Dialogue and Outrage: Essays on Literature and Culture, appeared. In the same year, Soyinka accepted the position of Professor of African Studies and Theatre at Cornell University. In 1989, a third novel, inspired by his father's intellectual circle, Ìsarà: A Voyage Around Essay, appeared. In July 1991 the BBC African Service transmitted his radio play A Scourge of Hyacinths, and the next year (1992) in Siena (Italy), his play From Zia with Love had its premiere. Both works are very bitter political parodies, based on events that took place in Nigeria in the 1980s. In 1993 Soyinka was awarded an honorary doctorate from Harvard University. The following year, another part of his autobiography appeared: Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years (A Memoir: 1946–1965). In 1995, his play, The Beatification of Area Boy, was published. In October 1994, he was appointed UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for the Promotion of African culture, human rights, freedom of expression, media and communication.
In November 1994, Soyinka fled from Nigeria on a motorcycle via the border with Benin, and then went to the United States. In 1996, his book The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis, was first published. In 1997, he was charged with treason by the government of General Sani Abacha. The International Parliament of Writers (IPW) was established in 1993 to provide support for writers victimized by persecution. Soyinka became the organization's second president from 1997 to 2000. In 1999 a new volume of poems by Soyinka, entitled Outsiders, was released. That same year, a BBC-commissioned play called Document of Identity aired on BBC Radio 3, telling the lightly-fictionalized story of the problems his daughter's family encountered during a stopover in Britain when they fled Nigeria for the US in 1996; her son, Oseoba Airewele was born in Luton and became a stateless person.
Soyinka's play King Baabu premièred in Lagos in 2001, a political satire on the theme of African dictatorship. In 2002, a collection of his poems entitled Samarkand and Other Markets I Have Known was published by Methuen. In April 2006, his memoir You Must Set Forth at Dawn was published by Random House. In 2006 he cancelled his keynote speech for the annual S.E.A. Write Awards Ceremony in Bangkok to protest the Thai military's successful coup against the government.
In April 2007, Soyinka called for the cancellation of the Nigerian presidential elections held two weeks earlier, beset by widespread fraud and violence. In the wake of the attempting bombing on a Northwest Airlines flight to the United States by a Nigerian student who had become radicalised in Britain, Soyinka questioned the British government's social logic in allowing every religion to openly proselytise their faith, asserting that it was being abused by religious fundamentalists, thereby turning England into, in his view, a cesspit for the breeding of extremism. He supported the freedom of worship but warned against the consequence of the illogic of allowing religions to preach apocalyptic violence.
In August 2014, Soyinka delivered a recording of his speech "From Chibok with Love" to the World Humanist Congress in Oxford, hosted by the International Humanist and Ethical Union and the British Humanist Association. The Congress theme was Freedom of thought and expression: Forging a 21st Century Enlightenment. He was awarded the 2014 International Humanist Award. He served as scholar-in-residence at NYU's Institute of African American Affairs.
Soyinka opposes allowing Fulani herdsmen the ability to graze their cattle on open land in southern, Christian-dominated Nigeria and believes these herdsmen should be declared terrorists to enable the restriction of their movements.
In December 2020, Soyinka described 2020 as the most challenging year in the nation's history, saying: "With the turbulence that characterised year 2020, and as activities wind down, the mood has been repugnant and very negative. I don't want to sound pessimistic but this is one of the most pessimistic years I have known in this nation and it wasn't just because of COVID-19. Natural disasters had happened elsewhere, but how have you managed to take such in their strides?"
September 2021 saw the publication of Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, Soyinka's first novel in almost 50 years, described in the Financial Times as "a brutally satirical look at power and corruption in Nigeria, told in the form of a whodunnit involving three university friends." Reviewing the book in The Guardian, Ben Okri said: "It is Soyinka's greatest novel, his revenge against the insanities of the nation's ruling class and one of the most shocking chronicles of an African nation in the 21st century. It ought to be widely read."
The film adaptation by Biyi Bandele of Soyinka's 1975 stage play Death and the King's Horseman, co-produced by Netflix and Ebonylife TV, titled Elesin Oba, The King's Horseman, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) in September 2022. It is Soyinka's first work to be made into a feature film, and the first Yoruba-language film to premiere at TIFF.
Personal life
Soyinka has been married three times and divorced twice. He has eight children from his three marriages and two other daughters. His first marriage was in 1958 to the late British writer Barbara Dixon, whom he met at the University of Leeds in the 1950s. Barbara was the mother of his first son, Olaokun, and his daughter Morenike. His second marriage was in 1963 to Nigerian librarian Olaide Idowu, with whom he had three daughters – Moremi, Iyetade (1965–2013), Peyibomi – and a second son, Ilemakin. Soyinka's youngest daughter is Amani. Soyinka married Folake Doherty in 1989 and the couple have three sons: Tunlewa, Bojode and Eniara.
In 2014, Soyinka revealed his battle with prostate cancer.
Soyinka has commented on his close friendships with Toni Morrison and Henry Louis Gates Jr., saying: "Friendship, to me, is what saves one's sanity."
Religion
In November 2022, during a public presentation of his two-volume collection of essays, Soyinka said in relation to religion:
"Do I really need one (religion)? I have never felt I needed one. I am a mythologist... No, I don't worship any deity. But I consider deities as creatively real and therefore my companions in my journey in both the real world and the imaginative world."
Around July 2023, Soyinka came under severe criticism, after writing an open letter to the Emir of Ilorin, Ibrahim Sulu-Gambari, over the cancellation of the Isese festival proposed by an Osun priestess, Omolara Olatunji.
Legacy and honours
The Wole Soyinka Annual Lecture Series was founded in 1994 and "is dedicated to honouring one of Nigeria and Africa's most outstanding and enduring literary icons: Professor Wole Soyinka". It is organised by the National Association of Seadogs (Pyrates Confraternity), which organisation Soyinka with six other students founded in 1952 at the then University College Ibadan.
In 2011, the African Heritage Research Library and Cultural Centre built a writers' enclave in his honour. It is located in Adeyipo Village, Lagelu Local Government Area, Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. The enclave includes a Writer-in-Residence Programme that enables writers to stay for a period of two, three or six months, engaging in serious creative writing. In 2013, he visited the Benin Moat as the representative of UNESCO in recognition of the Naija seven Wonders project. He is currently the consultant for the Lagos Black Heritage Festival, with the Lagos State deeming him as the only person who could bring out the aims and objectives of the Festival to the people. He was appointed a patron of Humanists UK in 2020.
In 2014, the collection Crucible of the Ages: Essays in Honour of Wole Soyinka at 80, edited by Ivor Agyeman-Duah and Ogochwuku Promise, was published by Bookcraft in Nigeria and Ayebia Clarke Publishing in the UK, with tributes and contributions from Nadine Gordimer, Toni Morrison, Ama Ata Aidoo, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Henry Louis Gates, Jr, Margaret Busby, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Ali Mazrui, Sefi Atta, and others.
In 2018, Henry Louis Gates, Jr tweeted that Nigerian filmmaker and writer Onyeka Nwelue visited him in Harvard and was making a documentary film on Wole Soyinka. As part of efforts to mark his 84th birthday, a collection of poems titled 84 Delicious Bottles of Wine was published for Wole Soyinka, edited by Onyeka Nwelue and Odega Shawa. Among the notable contributors was Adamu Usman Garko, award-winning teenage essayist, poet and writer.
⚫️ 1973: Honorary D.Litt., University of Leeds[124]
⚫️1983: Elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (Hon. FRSL)[125]
⚫️ 1983: Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, United States
1986: Nobel Prize for Literature
1986: Agip Prize for Literature
1986: Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic (CFR), national honour of Nigeria
1990: Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature
1993: Honorary doctorate, Harvard University
2002: Honorary fellowship, SOAS University of London
2005: Honorary doctorate degree, Princeton University
2005: Enstooled as the Akinlatun of Egbaland, a Nigerian chief, by the Oba Alake of the Egba clan of Yorubaland. Soyinka became a tribal aristocrat by way of this, one vested with the right to use the Yoruba title Oloye as a pre-nominal honorific.
2009: Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement presented by Awards Council member Archbishop Desmond Tutu at an awards ceremony at St. George's Cathedral, Cape Town, South Africa
2013: Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, Lifetime Achievement, United States
2014: International Humanist Award
2017: Joins the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, as a Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Humanities
2017: "Special Prize" of the Europe Theatre Prize
2018: University of Ibadan's arts theatre renamed as Wole Soyinka Theatre.
2018: Honorary Doctorate Degree of Letters, Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB).
2022: Honorary Degree from Cambridge University, bestowed upon people who have made outstanding achievements in their respective fields.
Europe Theatre Prize
In 2017, he received the Special Prize of the Europe Theatre Prize, in Rome. The Prize organization stated:
A Special Prize is awarded to Wole Soyinka, writer, playwright and poet, Nobel Prize for literature in 1986, who with his work has been able to create an ideal bridge between Europe and Africa (...) With his art and his commitment, Wole Soyinka has contributed to a renewal of African cultural life, participating actively in the dialogue between Africa and Europe, touching on more and more urgent political themes and bringing, in English, richness and beauty to literature, theatre and action in Europe and the four corners of the world.
naptu2: Obafemi Johnson was the brother of Mobolaji Johnson (who was governor of Lagos).
naptu2: There was something that Victor Banjo was doing that neither Ojukwu nor Ademoyega knew about. Wole Soyinka wrote about it in his book.
Soyinka travelled to Biafra to see Ojukwu, Chinua Achebe, Christopher Okigbo and Victor Banjo in order to find a way to stop the killings. His meeting with Banjo was very interesting.
Banjo said that he did not believe in Biafra and he also wanted to stop the Northern Oligarchy that installed Gowon as head of state. He spoke of a third force that would unite Nigeria, overthrow the Northern Oligarchs and end the war. (In fact, in Why We Struck, Adewale Ademoyega said that Banjo told him that he had initially sent messages to Gowon that he wanted to return to Nigeria, but that Gowon replied that he could only return to a prison/detention in Nigeria).
He wanted Wole Soyinka to help him take messages to leaders of the West.
He gave Soyinka messages to give to several leaders, including Chief Obafemi Awolowo, but the most interesting message and the message that produced the most drama was the message that he gave Wole Soyinka to give to the GOC at Ibadan, Colonel Olusegun Obasanjo.
Soyinka had never met Obasanjo before, but he had a lot of contacts in virtually every agency in Nigeria, so he tapped his contacts and tried to arrange a meeting with Obasanjo. Most of his contacts told him that he should not meet Obasanjo because Obasanjo was selfish and could not be trusted, but Soyinka continued to try to arrange a meeting and one of his contacts in military intelligence eventually gave him a secret number with which he could call Obasanjo.
Many years later, Obasanjo told Soyinka that he did not know that the phone existed. It was a phone that was hidden in Obasanjo’s official residence. Obasanjo said that he kept hearing a strange ringing sound and he traced the source of the sound to a wardrobe in one of the guest rooms. He opened the wardrobe and discovered that there was a phone in it (remember that there were no mobile phones in Nigeria at that time, so this was a landline). He picked up the receiver and it was Soyinka on the other side of the line. They arranged a meeting that was to hold late at night on a deserted expressway.
Soyinka and Obasanjo agreed to attend the meeting alone and unarmed. However, Soyinka’s best friend, the insurance magnate Obafemi Babington Johnson (OBJ) insistited that he must follow Soyinka to the meeting. He argued that many people had said that Obasanjo could not be trusted and he also argued that it was not safe to attend such a meeting at night alone. Soyinka eventually agreed that Obafemi Johnson could follow him in another car, park in some distance away and watch the rendezvous point until he felt certain that Soyinka was safe.
Soyinka got to the rendezvous point, a petrol station on a deserted highway, in the middle of the night and Olusegun Obasanjo arrived a few minutes later in his Volkswagen Beetle. Soyinka got into Obasanjo’s car and they drove off. Apparently Obasanjo came with some escorts because a pair of headlights followed them. Seeing a car following Obasanjo’s Beetle, Obafemi Babington Johnson also followed the Beetle. So there were two cars following them. Then Obasanjo sped up, drove a little dangerously and lost both cars that were following them. He eventually parked somewhere on the expressway and Soyinka delivered the message.
Victor Banjo wanted free passage through the West on his way to Lagos. He didn’t want Obasanjo’s troops to challenge him. Obasanjo replied that, as an army officer, he could not give Victor Banjo free passage through his area of command. He said that his loyalty was to Lagos and to whoever was in charge in Lagos. He said that there are other ways that Victor Banjo could get to Lagos if he wanted, for example, he could go through Okiti Pupa and over water, but he would not give Victor Banjo free passage through his area of responsibility.
Obasanjo drove back to the rendezvous point and dropped Soyinka there.
However, Victor Banjo continued to call people in the West after that encounter between Soyinka and Obasanjo. He increasingly became more aggressive and angry during his phone conversations and he was calling even more leaders in the West. Wole Soyinka became alarmed because Victor Banjo had clearly thrown caution to the wind. Banjo had a sister at the University College Hospital and Soyinka advised this sister to stop taking Banjo’s calls for her own safety. It was most likely that Police Special Branch was monitoring these calls.
I suspect that it was these calls and Obasanjo’s report to his superiors that led to Soyinka’s detention by the Gowon Regime. Many years later, Wole Soyinka confronted Obasanjo about his report to his superiors. Apparently, Obasanjo had told his superiors that Soyinka tried to convince him to give Victor Banjo easy passage through the West. He reportedly implied that Soyinka also tried to bribe him to allow Banjo easy passage through the West. Soyinka said that his role in the whole affair was that of a messenger. He did not express any opinion on Banjo’s message, he did not try to convince Obasanjo, he simply delivered the message to Obasanjo and that was that. He certainly did not try to induce Obasanjo to accept Banjo’s request. According to Soyinka, Obasanjo admitted, at that party many years later, that Soyinka did not try to convince him to accept Banjo’s request.
Soyinka, at that party many years later, also forced Obasanjo to admit that he was armed during their meeting at the petrol station. Obasanjo said of course he was armed. He said that no soldier worth his salt would attend such a meeting unarmed.
See Wole Soyinka's book, "You Must Set Forth At Dawn" for more details.
Interview with Wole Soyinka after he was released from prison.
In July 2004, General Yakubu Gowon seized the occasion of the banquet organised by the Ogun State government at the auditorium of the Government House, Valley View, Abeokuta, to mark the end of activities for Soyinka’s 70th birthday celebrations to explain and defend his regime.
Gowon told the guests “When I was Head of State, he (Soyinka) did not want anything in uniform and reports reaching me were that he was doing everything to effect a change of the system.”
“I was told by some people that I should make sure that he (Soyinka) did not circulate much. Gowon waxed humorous: “At that time, he was very, very young; he had no grey hairs, perhaps what happened to him (his imprisonment) might have caused this his numerous grey hair. Both of us were very young and idealistic at that time and I happened to be the man in charge of Nigeria at that time.”
“The tiny young man was trying everything he could to disrupt the normal process. We sat down and decided he must not circulate anymore because we thought he was then becoming very dangerous to the system, so we proffered what could be done to him. So he was my guest for two years and four months.”
naptu2: Something I wrote last year. Posted it on the legends thread.
In October 1965, he was arrested and charged with holding up a radio station at gunpoint and replacing the tape of a speech by the premier of Western Nigeria, Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola, with a different one accusing the premier of election malpractice.
“It all proceeded according to plan. The duty officers responded as any sensible person would under the gun, removed the premier’s tape and replaced it with mine. It ran long enough for the message to the government to be clearly transmitted – drop your stolen mandate, leave town and take your reprobates with you etc. etc. Then a disbelieving senior operator in another control room roused himself from his paralysis, rushed into the studio and cut off the transmission. By that time I had slipped away. My retreat was unhindered”.
Wole Soyinka was declared wanted for stealing the tape of the premier’s speech. He went into hiding, first in Ibadan and later in the Eastern Region. The government of the Eastern Region and the Eastern Region police were sympathetic to his cause. The Federal Police found out that he was in the East and guessed that he would be at Professor Sam Aluko’s house, so they sent a signal to the Eastern Region police to search for him there. The following ensued.
“They arrived as promised, armed with copies of the WANTED notice that was now home to my photograph. A charade ensued. Sam accompanied them as they looked through the rooms, one after the other, passed through the living room where I was seated, looked right through me as through a windowpane. Content with the futility of their mission, they sat down with the Aluko family in the same living room. With a straight face, they enquired of Sam Aluko if he had any news of me. Sam shook his head in the negative. Well, be sure to keep us informed if he makes contact – we’ll leave this WANTED notice with you in case you lay eyes on anyone resembling him – again looking straight through me as I sat sipping my coffee”.
From, "You Must Set Forth At Dawn".
In 1967 Wole Soyinka journeyed to Biafra to meet with Odumegwu Ojukwu, Chinua Achebe, etc. in order to find a solution to the brewing crisis that was to later lead to the civil war. He also met Colonel Victor Banjo, who told him that he did not believe in Biafra, but rather, intended to lead a third force (The Liberation Army of Nigeria) to invade Lagos and overthrow Yakubu Gowon. Victor Banjo asked Soyinka to help him deliver a message to Obafemi Awolowo, Olusegun Obasanjo (General Officer Commanding the troops in the West) and other Western leaders.
Soyinka, with the help of an officer in military intelligence, called Obasanjo. Obasanjo said he had to search for the source of the mysterious ringing that he eventually traced to a phone in a wardrobe in his bedroom. They agreed on a rendezvous and also agreed to attend the meeting alone and unarmed. However, they both arrived at the rendezvous with “lookouts” and escorts. Obasanjo later admitted that he was also armed at the time. They succeeded in losing their lookouts and escorts and Soyinka delivered Banjo’s message. Banjo wanted Obasanjo to stand aside and grant him free passage through the West on his journey to unseat Gowon in Lagos. Obasanjo, in reply, refused to grant free passage to Banjo, stating that he had sworn an oath of loyalty to Lagos and so he was loyal to whoever was in command in Lagos. He suggested that Banjo could get to Lagos through other means, for instance, over water via Okitipupa.
Soyinka was declared wanted by the government (he was even branded a Biafran spy), arrested and detained for two years and four months (he spent a year and ten months of that time in solitary confinement).
Photo 2) 31 year old Wole Soyinka (and some unidentified people) at the Ibadan High Court premises where he was accused of holding up Radio Nigeria staff at gunpoint, removing tapes containing Premier (Samuel Akintola) of the Western Region's speech, and substituting them with an anti-government broadcast.
Michael Odesanya, one of the prominent lawyers of that period, served as Wole Soyinka's lead defence counsel while Chief Tanimose Bankole-Oki was the government prosecutor.
naptu2: Picture below (3 of my favourites): John Pepper-Clark, Professor Chinua Achebe and Professor Wole Soyinka @ Dodan Barracks to plead for the life of (soldier and poet) Major General Mamman Vatsa. Picture and some excerpts in the narrative below are from "You May Set Forth At Dawn" by Wole Soyinka (published by Bookcraft).
Photo 2) Professor Wole Soyinka and Chief Bola Ige
Photo 3) Professor Wole Soyinka in his private gallery
naptu2: This is a collaboration between two living legends. One is a world famous writer and academic, while the other is an extremely gifted singer, comedian and actor.
The writer wrote and the singer sang (although you can hear the writer's voice on the record).
Note: Ethical Revolution was Shehu Shagari's programme, but his government was very corrupt.
Unfortunately the record skips a few times (the problem of vinyl).
naptu2: Listen to that song from the 8:41 minute mark if you really want to hear Wole Soyinka's voice.
naptu2: I wonder if I should call Uncle Tunji Oyelana to mark the end of the day for us.
naptu2: I mentioned Tunji Oyelana earlier, so I need to clarify.
NO
There's no "I Love My Country" or "Sura Di Tailor" in the list.
naptu2: I have got to admit that I would not have remembered the lyrics of this version of this song if the Internet did not exist. It has been overshadowed in my mind by a slightly slower version with slightly different lyrics that was used as the theme song of the early 1980s sitcom, Sura Di Tailor (Tunji Oyelana also starred in the sitcom).
This song is on the B side of Unlimited Liability Company (Share-Di-Garri, i.e. Shagari).
Lyrics by Professor Wole Soyinka, sung by Tunji Oyelana:
Tunji Oyelana And The Benders - I Love My Country.
naptu2: I've posted this many times before, but I'm going to post it again, because I think I'll need it very soon.
The question is, is there anything that this man could not do? He is a great actor, a fantastic comedian and just listen to the music in the video I posted yesterday. Is there anything that he could not do?
This particular song was like a second Nigerian anthem. This is the original version. It's not the version that was used in the sitcom or the version that was used by government.
Photo 1) 1946. Secondary school days. Wole is on the right lying on his side by the school plaque which reads ‘ALL THE WORLD IS A STAGE’.
Photo 2) Wole Soyinka in red, with his fellow freshmen at the University College, Ibadan (Now University of Ibadan) in 1952 where he studied for 2 years before being awarded a scholarship to finish his B.A degree at the University of Leeds.
Photo 3) Wole Soyinka and his elder sister Atinuke.
naptu2: I have the book, so I went and read it again after making that post. It's been some months since then, but I can give you a better account of what happened.
General Abdulsalami Abubakar addressed the United Nations and it was on that trip to the US that he invited several pro-democracy activists to see him.
Professor Wole Soyinka and around 3 or 4 other activists went to the Nigerian UN Mission to see him. They saw a notorious pamphlet while they were waiting. That pamphlet contained some of the lies in my next post. One of the other activists drew their attention to it. He was very angry and it took some effort by Wole Soyinka to calm him down.
During the meeting with Abubakar, Professor Soyinka announced his intention to sue the Nigerian Government for the lies in the pamphlet. General Abubakar had never heard of the pamphlet. Professor Gambari said that it was a certain official that brought the pamphlet to the mission. He said that he had warned the official that he didn't want anything to do with it.
Anyway, Professor Soyinka said that it was nothing personal, but that he intended to sue the government.
General Abubakar then listed the many people that told him that they were going to sue the government (if I remember correctly, it included General Obasanjo and the family of Chief Abiola). He said that, if the people win the cases, then the money would come from the tax payers. He listed so many problems that Nigeria had and he appealed that everybody should come together to solve them, rather than adding to them.
The last time I wrote about the lies about Tai Solarin, so this time I'll write about the lies about Wole Soyinka, most especially because Obidients are repeating them (although I believe that every sensible person knows that they are lies).
The next post was actually about Tai Solarin, but I'll cut off the section about Dr Solarin. Click on my username in the quote if you want to read the whole thing
naptu2: Since it's two months since I wanted to write this post, I guess I should just rush through it, otherwise I might never create it.
There were a lot of people that fought against military rule in Nigeria. The military governments created propaganda to tarnish the images of these people. In some cases, this propaganda was not actually created by the government, rather they were created by people that were close to the government.
So, for example, if you mentioned Professor Wole Soyinka, some people will tell you that he created the first confraternity in Nigeria (as if a confraternity is a bad thing). Many of the people that say this actually know the difference between a confraternity and a youth gang, but they want to deceive people who do not know the difference.
↑ That argument above is the standard argument that has always been used, but the Abacha Government went into overdrive in churning out propaganda against Professor Soyinka. They produced a woman that claimed that she was Professor Soyinka's wife. That woman has vanished since the Abacha regime came to an end. They spread stories that Professor Soyinka did not actually have the university degrees that he had (this lie has been resurrected by Obidients because of Professor Soyinka's position on the last election). They also accused him of being behind the bombing campaign that rocked Nigeria in the late 1990s.
In fact, when Abdusalam Abubakar became head of state and was trying to reconcile Nigerians, when he met with Wole Soyinka in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting, the very first thing that Professor Soyinka told him was that he intended to sue Nigeria's permanent representative to the United Nations, Professor Ibrahim Gambari, because Professor Gambari repeated some of those lies and he also intended to sue Abdulsalam's government because Abacha's government created the lies and Abdulsalam's government, as its successor, has inherited the responsibility for the lies. General Abubakar had to plead with him.
Of course everybody knows the issue with Fela. The military governments used to scare parents by pointing out that Fela smoked indian hemp and slept with a lot of women. They frightened parents that their children will become like Fela if they listened to his music.
It was really very difficult to create propaganda against Chief Gani Fawehinmi, but the military governments tried, it's just that it didn't stick. They claimed that Chief Fawhinmi was just a troublemaker, but people didn't care about those claims. They also said that he had an unexplained source of wealth, but that didn't stick either because Chief Fawehinmi had a habit of representing people for free and of giving scholarships to a large number of people. People did not care about his source of wealth because he never held government office. But I can tell you his source of funds.
Chief Gani Fawehinmi was a lawyer and he owned his own chambers, so you might think that he made money by practising law, but Chief Fawhinmi had a habit of representing poor people and students for free. I don't think that arguing cases in court was his main source of money.'
You see, lawyers need to cite previous cases, but it was very difficult to get certified true copies of judgements from court registries across Nigeria. Chief Gani Fawhinmi sent his lawyers to courts across Nigeria to get details of cases. He then published the details of these cases in what is called the Nigerian Weekly Law Report. This became the bible of the legal profession in Nigeria. Every lawyer must have one. Gani Fawehinmi made a lot of money from publishing the Nigerian Weekly Law Report and he used some of that money to provide scholarships for the poor.
Now to the subject of this post, Dr Tai Solarin.
Dr Tai Solarin
There was nothing that the military government could use against Dr Tai Solarin. Dr Solarin was a socialist who lived a very frugal life. He only wore khaki shorts, shirt and cap. He had no need for luxuries. So there was nothing that they could use against him. . .until 1990.
Dr Tai Solarin was one of the leaders of the 1989 SAP riots and he was arrested by the SSS (which was normal, he was always being arrested by governments). The government then entered into discussions with him. Dr Solarin wanted to help the poor, so they gave him an opportunity to do that.
naptu2: Pyrates Confraternity, National Association of Seadogs, etc
Professor Wole Soyinka attended the University of Ibadan (then known as the University College, Ibadan) from 1952 till 1954. He and his friends noticed some problems at the school.
They noticed that children of the wealthy got certain privileges and seemed to look down on the children of the poor, while the children of the poor tried to immitate the children of the rich.
They also noticed that there was division in the student body and that division was based on tribal affiliations.
Wole Soyinka, Ralph Opara, Pius Oleghe, Ikpehare Aig-Imoukhuede, Nathaniel Oyelola, Olumuyiwa Awe and Sylvanus Egbuche (dubbed the Magnificent Seven) therefore decided to create a fraternity that would bring students together and fight against the divisions that they had noticed.
American fraternities are usually influenced by Greek and general European culture, but the fraternity that the Magnificent Seven created was influenced by pirate novels and movies that were popular in Nigeria at the time. They thus decided to name their fraternity the Pyrates Confraternity.
Many of the symbols and names of the fraternity were from the novel, Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. Wole Soyinka chose the name Capn Blood from the novel Captain Blood: His Odyssey by Rafael Sabatini. (Those novels were also adapted into movies).
The Pyrates Confraternity was founded in 1952 and its objectives were
To uphold human dignity and maintaining a just and progressive society shorn of discriminatory and unmeritorious considerations
The confraternity was open to all bright students, regardless of social status, ethnic group or religion.
Professor Soyinka left the University of Ibadan in 1954 and moved to the UK to continue his studies.
The origin of the problem
In 1972, twenty years after the Pyrates Confraternity had been formed and many years after the Magnificent Seven had moved on, three members of the Pyrates Confraternity, Kunle Adigun, Bolaji Carew and Tunde Jawando, accused the leadership of the Pyrates Confraternity (on university campuses) of violating the original ideas of the fraternity. They said that there were "super members" of the Pyrates Fraternity who behaved like they were above others.
They said that the original reason that the Magnificent Seven created the fraternity was to fight classism and discrimination, but that the then leaders of the Pyrates Fraternity were practicing classism and discrimination. They therefore broke away and formed the Buccaneers Confraternity.
Other groups broke away from the Pyrates and the Buccaneers and there was rivalry between the various groups.
By the 1980s these organisations were no longer fraternities, instead they had become youth gangs, just like the Bloods and the Crips in the US. They were fighting against each other and they became known for violence, killings and intimidation, instead of the academic excellence and social and charity work that fraternities are known for.
Due to this situation, the Pyrates Confraternity dissolved all the affiliates on university campuses and left the universities. However, several youth gangs on campuses adopted the Pyrates name.
National Association of Seadogs
The Pyrates Fraternity still exists as the National Association of Seadogs. They are official accredited INEC observers, they engage in charity activities and they hold conferences and workshops.
Professor Wole Soyinka sometimes uses the National Association of Seadogs as an intelligence service. I told you abou this after Professor Soyinka's discussion with Okey Ndibe in South Africa.
The National Association of Seadogs has had many members over the decades. Professor Soyinka has also taught many people, both in Nigeria and abroad. Sometimes, during the military era, someone that Professor Soyinka did not even know might suddenly warn him that he was about to be arrested. What happened was that the person was probably one of Soyinka's former students or a member of the National Association of Seadogs, but he had become a police officer or soldier.
Professor Soyinka said certain things when he was discussing with Okey Ndibe. He knew who actually won the election because the National Association of Seadogs was an official INEC accredited observer and he knew what was happening within the Obidient Movement because some Obidients were his former students, members of the National Association of Seadogs or were people that he mentored.
Photo 1) The original 7 founders of the Pyrates Confraternity.
Photo 2) Members of the Pyrates Confraternity welcomed Nnamdi Azikiwe to the University of Lagos in 1972. Dr Azikiwe had just been appointed the chancellor of the university.
Photo 3) Members of the Pyrates Confraternity welcome the Prime Minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, to the University of Ibadan in 1960.
Photo 4) The original 7 members of the Pyrates Confraternity
1) Fraternities and Sororities: A confraternity, fraternity or sorority (and in, America, Greek letter organisation) are social clubs in universities in many parts of the world. These associations are very common in American universities and very many Americans, including prominent politicians, businessmen, and entertainment stars are members of the associations. The associations were generally formed to help their members academically and serve as a forum for people to network and connect. Fraternity = brotherhood, sorority = sisterhood. Former president George H. W. Bush was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon at Yale, Bill Clinton is an honorary member of Phi Beta Sigma, and George W. Bush is a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon at Yale like his father. Basketball star, Michael Jordan, is a member of Omega Psi Phi, civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha and comedian and actor Cedric “The Entertainer” is a member of Kappa Alpha Psi.
What Wole Soyinka started was a fraternity that was meant to be like the fraternities in American universities.
2) Youth gangs: A gang is a group or society of associates, friends or members of a family with a defined leadership and internal organization that identifies with or claims control over territory in a community and engages, either individually or collectively, in illegal, and possibly violent, behaviour.
Many youth gangs sprang up in the United States in the period between the 1940s and the 1960s. The most well known are the Bloods and the Crips. These youth gangs control territory through acts of violence and intimidation. They usually have their unique colours and symbols like handshakes, walking styles and dances. They could violently attack and even kill someone for wearing their colour in their territory. They raise funds through illegal means like bullying and intimidation, drug sales, etc.
Many fraternities in Nigerian universities became youth gangs in the 1970s and most especially in the 1980s. They engaged in violent acts like murder and assault, gruesome initiation rituals, etc. In response to this, Professor Wole Soyinka pulled the Pyrates Fraternity, now known as the National Association of Seadogs, out of the universities.
3) Mafia: A mafia is a type of organized crime syndicate whose primary activities are protection racketeering, arbitrating disputes between criminals, and brokering and enforcing illegal agreements and transactions. Mafias often engage in secondary activities such as gambling, loan sharking, drug-trafficking, prostitution, and fraud. Examples of Mafia syndicates include the Cosa Nostra, the Yakuza, the Camorra and the Bratva.
The members of these 1980s and 1990s youth gangs have become older and some of them have moved out of Nigeria. They have established their organisations as criminals syndicates in places like Canada, Italy and the United States. They engage in drug trafficking, pimping prostitutes and other illegal activities and they have formed agreements with or fought wars against the Italian Mafia, the American Mafia and other such illegal organisations.
Some members of these organisations have become government officials and high ranking members of the society in Nigeria.
What Wole Soyinka founded in 1952 was a fraternity, not a youth gang or mafia syndicate.
I listened to a BBC interview a long time ago (decades ago), in which Professor Soyinka addressed this issue. The interviewer called these organisations "cults" and Professor Soyinka said that they are not cults, they are youth gangs. He explained that it was because of these youth gangs that he ordered that the Pyrates Fraternity should cease existing on university campuses. He blamed the government for allowing these youth gangs to exist and he even hinted at the fact that a lot of the members are children of people in government and that's why the government had not done anything about them. He condemned the barbaric acts that were committed by these youth gangs.
That was on the BBC World Service Radio a long time ago.
naptu2: The BBC interview that I wrote about occurred before this, but he repeated some of the things that he said in that interview.
This is the Oputa Panel in 2001 or thereabouts. Professor Soyinka talked about the Pyrates Fraternity and the other groups, which he said are not fraternities but Campus Killer Cults (which he called KKK).
He talked about what led to the creation of the KKK and also, as he did in the BBC interview, he said that he believes that most members of those killer organisations are children of the elite.
He completely dissociates the Pyrates from those killer organisations.
They say they are fraternities, but I say that is not what fraternities are about.
On the contrary, the Pyrates voluntarily withdrew from the universities about 12 years ago because they were getting confused with those organisations.
naptu2: He also repeated what he said in the BBC interview about vice chancellors using those murderous organisations to intimidate and control people on campus.
naptu2: It's important for me to state here that there have been around the country many so-called initiations into Pyrates Confraternity that have. . .We unmasked, for example, a syndicate that were charging people for initiation into the Pyrates Confraternity into a non-existent deck, as we would say.
I've only highlighted a few of the things that he said, but you should watch the video yourself and see how he condemned them. He called members of the killer organisations criminals. He said that they are mostly children of the elite who have been spoiled and that most of their parents are government officials who have also committed criminal acts with impunity and that's probably where the children learnt it from. He said that the Pyrates had voluntarily withdrawn from university campuses a long time ago because people were confusing them with the killer groups and he also talked about people that were charging for initiation into fake Pyrates Confraternity. He talked about the names they adopted in the confraternity, etc.
One of the lawyers asked him if he would allow his children to join the Pyrates and he said that his son is a member of the Zero Meridian (London) branch of the Pyrates.
He talked about the charitable causes that the Pyrates have taken up, including blood donations, adopting motherless babies, fighting against drug abuse, etc.
Professor Wole Soyinka in conversation with Okey Ndibe in South Africa.
The full exchange on the 2023 elections (beginning at the 1:16:15 mark in the video).
Okey Ndibe: I'm going to. . .the trouble with having you on stage is that there is never enough time. In fact, not enough time to complain that one doesn't have enough time. But there's a question that a lot of young people insisted that I ask you.
One of us on stage (and it's not me), as a young man, stormed a radio station in Ibadan to . . .at gunpoint. . .to stop the announcement of an electoral. . .fraudulent. . .the outcome of a fraudulent election.
After the most recent Nigerian elections in February, the vice presidential candidate of the Labour Party gave a TV interview where he essentially claimed that his ticket won the election and warned that the judiciary should not swear in the man who had been announced as the winner. Subsequently you went on television and you accused him of being fascistic in his take.
So a lot of young men said, we were looking up to Soyinka. He went to a radio station to stop what was an impunity. What has happened to Wole Soyinka today?
Wole Soyinka: Oh, consistency.
(Okey Ndibe and the audience laugh)
Wole Soyinka: That's all. Truth matters to me. Truth.
Our problem is that many people, they look for short cuts, well, I do too sometimes, but I do my homework first.
The election you are talking about which took place in the Western Region, this notorious gunman episode, which in fact, for a long time I insisted on being coy about, I always said, "I'm sorry, I was tried and I was acquitted", which is true. I said, "Don't you believe in the Nigerian judiciary? What more do you want me to say"?
But I want to stress the fact that I was right in the thick of that election. I also collaborated with a radio unit, installed in Oke-Ado, through which we were announcing the correct results, as we obtained them from the various polling booths. You know where that radio station. . .it came from your part of the country and we inserted it into this. . .the house of the opposition. We collated results and then Ukaonu would broadcast the result from that spot to Biafra, where it would then be rebroadcast to the whole nation.
In other words, I had and we had the facts. And the deputy prime minister went on air to boast that they had won. Before the election he had said that it doesn't matter. . .it was a fascistic regime and he went on air and he said, "We don't need anybody to vote for us. Whether you vote for us or not, the angels in heaven had already voted us in".
That was his statement on radio. They were determined and they were a brutal lot. The atrocities which they committed were enormous. We witnessed it first hand. And so, I wasn't relying on third hand information about the election results. We made. . .we contested throughout. We did our work, solidly.
Now, these recent elections. It's unfortunate that er. . .because. . .two things happened first of all. One party, well which party isn't, but, in any case, in this particular instance, one party took over the labour movement, which is one of my favourite movements also. And then it became a regional party, more than. . .whereas it was a marvellous breach into the established two camps. Peter Obi achieved something remarkable there, that he broke that mould. Yes.
However, he. did. not. win. the. election.
Let me remind you of a movement called Take Back Naija.
Oh, later on, remind me to ask what happened to Ngozi Ehiwere, who was one of the candidates. I've been looking for her. She was one of those who, during that period, succeeded, with the aid of friendly countries, in creating, if you like, a parallel INEC, which was embedded in the Surulere area, trained masses of motorcyclists, empowered them with radio cameras. . .Okada, we call them Okada riders, used them as monitors throughout the entire nation. They were trained in a secret house in Lagos, in the heart of Lagos. You wouldn't know that there were all these consoles down there, and broadcasting equipment, laptops, etcetera, and so the elections had been regularly monitored by that unit.
The original. . .it's no longer there in its original form in 2014, but its *** are still there. In addition, my own organisation has a monitoring unit, you know the one I'm talking about. And so I could say categorically that Peter Obi's party came third, not even second and that the leadership knew it, but they wanted to do, what we call in Yoruba, Gbajue. That is, you know you have force of arms, you also have force of lies. And it was gearing up towards violence. They were going to send. . .some of the hardliners were going to send crowds. . .young people into the streets to demonstrate. I'm always ready to be among such demonstrators, but only on the banner of truth, not of lies. Not of deceit.
We've had that kind of scenario before, remember Buhari, this same Buhari, who's a useless person anyway, in which the youth corpers were killed, you know the students that were recruited as monitoring units, returning officers and so on. Because of their uniforms they became targets. I was instrumental in working with some of our governors in extricating those youths from where they were hiding. They were brutalised.
And now this party wanted the same thing to happen and on the basis of a lie.
And we found this vice presidential candidate on television, boasting and insisting and threatening and menacing, trying to intimidate both the judiciary and the rest, what kind of government would result from that kind of conduct, do you think?
In addition, and this is the worst part, they didn't know it, but they were being used. Before the elections ever took place, there was a certain clandestine force, a reactionary, it included some ex-generals who were already calling for an interim government before the elections began. Interim government, some of them even went and demonstrated. . .you know, some of them were well known figures, including the proprietor of a university, calling for an interim government before elections ever took place.
And so the party was playing into the hands, maybe not consciously all of them, but some definitely, trying to create a situation to bring back the military. That's what I was against.
And before then I had already sent three emissaries to the leader, to that leader, saying curb. your. supporters. Just tell them to be on their guard. If you lose an election the first time, what does it matter. I said, you, just tell them to stop threatening, to stop intimidating people.
So it wasn't something new. It wasn't something spontaneous. No. I had to stop their getting youths on the streets to be slaughtered. And for what? For a lie. This for me was unacceptable.
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