As Eni Ogun, Cap’n, Captain Blood, Prof. Oluwole Akinwande Babatunde Soyinka, Nobel laureate, writer, essayist, playwright, poet, critic, actor, musician, wine connoisseur and (maybe not exactly) a sharpshooter (in the estimation of former President Olusegun Obasanjo) turns 90, the world is celebrating.
Making 90 is remarkable for a man who practically lived on one battlefront or the other. After a drama at a radio station, going into Emeka Odimegwu-Ojukwu’s battle-ridden Biafra, he ended up in General Yakubu Gowon’s gulag, before being hounded into exile by General Sani Abacha and trailed by would-be assassins.
His 90th birthday is a cause for celebration for the literati, even the Swedish Academy, whose citation for his Nobel prize said he was a writer, “who, in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones, fashions the drama of existence.”
Though his works have universal appeal, they are rooted in his Yoruba background, worldview and culture. Yoruba myths, traditions, even rites and history are evident in his works. He is quoted to have admitted that he uses (Yoruba?) myth as “the aesthetic matrix” for his works.
Matrix is sometimes defined as a set of algorithms that determines how things work. So, myths are probably the building blocks of Soyinka’s literary corpus. When he wrote, “In vain your bangles cast/Charmed circles at my feet/I am Abiku, calling for the first/and the repeated time,” he was relying on the Yoruba myth about abiku, the child with repeated reincarnations.
In this regard, he most certainly drew on the Yoruba belief that the “saworo” or ankle bangles could prevent another death of a child identified as an abiku because it has been “soaked” in some mystical life-saving potion.
Prof. Soyinka emerged on the consciousness of Nigerians with, “The Swamp Dwellers,” a play that debuted in 1958. Critics suggested that the failure of the protagonist, Igwezu, who left his city with the hope of prosperity in the city, was a caution about the el dorado that Nigerians thought they would enjoy after the British colonial masters would have departed Nigeria after Independence in 1960.
“The Invention,” his first play to be produced at the London Royal Theatre, was not quite as successful as The Swamp Dwellers. That may have been so because of its thrust against apartheid and his prediction that it would fail.
Both The Swamp Dwellers and The Invention proved to be accurately predictive. While Nigerians were still wallowing in regret because of unfulfilled great expectations after independence, apartheid eventually crumbled in South Africa.
Wole Soyinka, or WS to some, was born on July 13, 1934, to Samuel Ayodele Soyinka, headmaster of St. Peter’s Primary School, Ake, in Abeokuta, and Eniola Soyinka, whose mother was the daughter of Rev J.J. Ransome-Kuti, the father of Rev Israel Oludotun Ransome-Kuti, who, in turn, is the father of Afrobeat musician, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti.
He cut his teeth as an agitator when he ran errands for his grand-aunt, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, who led his mother and other Egba women, members of the 20,000-strong Abeokuta Women’s Union, in the Abeokuta Women’s Revolt that temporarily removed Sir Ladapo Ademola from his throne as the Alake of Egbaland.
Though the young Wole Soyinka may not have been an exactly innocent bystander during the Egba Women’s rebellion against Sir Ladapo over the payment of tax, the current Alake of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Gbadebo, Okukenu IV, has magnanimously declared July 13 of every year as Wole Soyinka Day. Apt and befitting.
The Alake even wants the Federal Government to do the same, just as New Orleans City in America’s state of Louisiana had already done. The Alake thinks Soyinka deserves the national honour of Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger.
A prophet must also find honour amongst his father’s people, as Egbaland, his maternal home has honoured him in a great manner. Maybe Ishara, his father’s homestead, will find something new to bestow upon him, apart from the Akogun title they gave him after he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986.
Just as he wrote “Ake: The Years of Childhood,” probably to acknowledge his maternal side, he also wrote “Isara: A Journey Around Essay,” to honour his father, whose initials, “S.A.,” he turned into the acronym, “Essay.”
Two of his children, Dr Olaokun Soyinka and Moremi Soyinka-Onijala, were recently ushered into Isara, via the Wole Soyinka Way, and were received in audience by the Odemo of Isara, Oba Albert Adebose Mayungbe, his chiefs, egungun masquerades and drummers.
But the existential battle that Soyinka and others fought against the perfidious government of Abacha is yet to be fully acknowledged or even understood. Apart from initiating Radio Kudirat, the pirate radio that drove the campaign against Abacha and his regime, Soyinka was able to prevent Abacha from tracking down and shutting the station.
When WS got the hint that the Abacha regime had contracted a European company to find the physical address of Radio Kudirat, he promptly met with the foreign minister of that country and gave a very serious message with a humorous turn of a Biblical phrase.
First, he reminded the foreign minister that the Bible gave the assurance that when you seek you shall find. Then he told the minister in simple but direct language, “But when you see (Radio Kudirat) you shall not find!” The minister understood perfectly and humourously responded, “Of course we shall not find.”
And, throughout the time that Radio Kudirat operated in Stavanger, Norway, and later moved to London, in England, the European company never acknowledged that they found it, even when it was so close to the Home Office in London.
It is regrettable that after Soyinka and many others, including President Bola Tinubu, went into the trenches against the “ethical crime” that the military committed by annulling Nigeria’s freest and fairest presidential election won by MKO Abiola on June 12, 1993, those who have been running this Fourth Republic to date have been as insensitive and despotic as the military.
That is why Nigerians, whom you may describe as naive, wonder why Soyinka and others stayed out of politics. Fighting for the soul of Nigeria and then leaving it to the moral scavengers has put the country in a perilous place. These politicians are mostly incompetent and corrupt.
At least some writers, in other climes, had accepted to serve as President of their countries, if only to serve as a moral compass or pathfinder for those who will do the real job of running the country. And it has paid off.
While Nigeria’s “ethical President” may not be living with a three-legged dog in an old farmhouse without a fence, driving a beat-up Volkswagen car, or wearing just one winter coat probably bought from an army surplus shop, his upright character should be a moral restraint for the politicians.
If anyone points to Dr Tai Solarin’s inability to rein in those who looted the People’s Bank of Nigeria as an argument against this argument, such a person must be a pessimist who is looking through the pessimistic prism of life.
Nigeria’s current predicament is caused by an acute deficit of morals. And it can only be mended by having just and upright men in power. Eni Ogun will be the first candidate for such a consideration.
Happy 90th birthday harvest WS Kongi.
