www.nairaland.com/attachments/5642542_soy0007_jpeg50198652fb5854828fc462966cf77abf Wole Soyinka as a ten-year-old choir boy.

www.nairaland.com/attachments/5642521_images25_jpegfdc0c25cc0e64b891974eb2fdea8615a
Wole Soyinka matriculating at the University College, Ibadan in the 50s

Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Babatunde Soyinka (Born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian playwright and poet. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first African to be honored in that category.

Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. 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 struggle for independence from Great Britain. 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.

Soyinka has been a strong critic of successive Nigerian governments, especially the country's many military dictators, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been 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 "NADECO Route." Abacha later proclaimed a death sentence against him "in absentia." With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation.

In Nigeria, Soyinka was a Professor of Comparative Literature (1975 to 1999) at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ife.With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. While in the United States, he first taught at Cornell University and then at Emory University where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and has served as scholar-in-residence at NYU’s Institute of African American Affairs and at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, US. He has also taught at the universities of Oxford, Harvard and Yale.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wole_Soyinka

I on behalf of the Igbos on Nairaland
And the Indigenous People of Biafra wish the Prof a very happy birthday.

Even though we all know Chinua Achebe deserved that Nobel Prize in Literature and not you.
I still admire you.
Thanks for your literary works,
Thanks for your nonconformism
Thanks for the SeaDogs
Thanks for speaking up against oppression.

Happy birthday and many more years sir!

Older than our president
But
Younger than Him

Captain blood the seadog. Your legacy sheds blood everyday.

Doesn't look 83....

HBD to u

HBD......... UNLIKE FORMAL REGIME. NOW HE DONT SPEAK AGAIN ABOUT POLITICS AND GOVERNANCE

Cool

Thug life

Badt guy. Afonja tins on point.

happy birthday prof
your hair worth more than Brazilian hair

I always knew he takes s.k.

Respect .
Buh no love.

concerned how his hair became so white

Abi d Pirates* confraternity he formed gods blessed him with that to represent their logo

FOOLISH MAN!! You are a course to Nigeria, you formed a fraternity where they kill themselves like animal, Now you brainwashed so many Nigerians that buhari will transform Nigeria in a twinkle of an eye! Because of the level of your education and wiseness everyone trooped out and vote for the Nomadic man! The man has spent most of his times in London!

Happy birthday great man.

Happy birthday

The greatest seadog

More handsome now than before.

gud for him

and our vegetable is on a dicing table somewher in london claiming to be in his 70s... Isorai

NwaAmaikpe:

oya drop it like it's hot

I like his white hair....

HBD sir, long life and prosperity.....

Gosh.. cool aging

lalasticlala:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wole_Soyinka

Happy Birthday Pa. WS, our very own and better Williams Shakespeare.

Na Osogbo weed be that?

Greatest literary icon of Nigeria

The man no dey old ohh