Till date, I have not still been able to finish reading this enigma’s epic, “The Man Died”, since I picked it up in 1979 (45 whole years ago). It is a 1972 non-fiction book exploring his experiences in prison during his 22 months imprisonment by federal authorities for hobnobbing with the Biafran successionist leader, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. I just pity literary Lilliputians like me. I am referring to Professor Akinwade Oluwole Soyinka, an unusual homo sapien. The likes of him – such as Gani Fawehinmi, Chinua Achebe, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Ayodele Awojobi, Bala Usman, Adaka Boro, Chike Obi, Martin Luther King Jnr, Albert Einstein, Willian Shakespeare, et al- come like a comet, only once in a generation. He is Africa’s first Nobel laureate in any field. His was in literature in 1986, a mere 52 years old.
The joke of his acquiring this Olympian heights states that some prospective Nobel laureate candidates had been invited for interview for the rare diadem. It was said that when Kongi engaged in his staccato linguistic masturbation and literary calisthenics, the mesmerised interviewing white panel which had become soaked in his phonetic stupor simply told him to take a bow and go. They told him he had already won. Yes. He had got the white interviewers so inebriated by his virtually incomprehensible “oyinbo” grammar that they preferred to let him go quietly and have their peace.
Soyinka is many things rolled into one. Like amoeba, he is shapeless. Like an onion, he has many layers. Foremost nobel laureate; literary icon; playwright; humanist; poet; essayist; teacher; political activist; dramatist, singer; rights activist; hunter; crusader; cultural ambassador; Seadog founder; globally revered; cerebral intellectual; wine connoisseur; fecundity personified; archaist and more. This man is undoubtedly a tiger and lion merged together, even though he once famously defied this belief by many to declare that “a tiger does not proclaim its tigritude; he pounces”.
Though some faceless people that the literary icon himself once described as “internet crawlers” once attempted, most vainly, to diminish the towering stature of this hero, he remains peerless; in comparable. The truth remains that the great Kongi is far way ahead and shoulders higher than those in the Nigerian pantheon of literary icons and deities that he belongs to.
Wole Soyinka has taught a whole generation of literary giants. At the University of Ife (now OAU) in the 70s, where he was a professor of comparative literature, we rookies in the then part 1 (they call it 100 level now) would gather at the University theatre to listen to the words of wisdom of this literary icon and intellectual prodigy. Even the great Ola Rotimi, Femi Osofisan and other literary giants deferred to his intimidating credentials.
He was also a great singer and a rebel of some sort. Was that not why he was detained for 22 months? You can now imagine me having the honour of passing through such fire eaters like Soyinka, including invited lecturers to give us pep talks. The likes of Gani Fawehinmi, Dr Tai Solarin, Prof Bade Onimode, Com. Ola Oni, Chris Okolie, Omafume Onoge, Sam Aluko, Eskor Toyo, Toye Olorode, Claude Ake, Niyi Oniroro, Edwin Madunagu, Ikenna Nzimiro, et al. I read English for three years before switching over to law. I was forced to lose one academic session because of my love for law (climbing down from Part 3 English to Part 2 Law).
Permit me to share my insights into two of his plays as it is impossible to plough through his trailer-load of literary writings.
I once read the nobel laureate’s “JERO’S METAMORPHOSIS”, a play staged in 1960 (I was barely 2 years old then); and published in 1963. I also read Soyinka’s “THE TRIALS OF BROTHER JERO”.
In the former play, Jero was in possession of a confidential file which revealed government’s plans to transform the beach into a public prosecution ground and tourists’ centre. The satirical play was about the willy ways Jero tried to unite all the church leaders operating at the beach and make them form one church, with him as the sole leader. Soyinka was satirically decrying the hypocritical way Nigerians practised the Christian religion.
He was shocked at the obsequious and unquestioning devotion that converts and adherents displayed towards their manipulative spiritual leaders. In “The Trials of Brother Jero” first published in 1964, Soyinka mocked the proselytizing Church preachers, who did not even have churches (as did brother Jero) and so preached in public places. He highlighted the transformation of these leaders with religious titles of Bishop, Pastor and Prophet, to military titles such as General, Colonel, Sergeant, etc.
Soyinka depicted church leaders as deceptive, corrupt, fraudulent, politically ambitious and abandoning their flock in pursuit of mercantilist and mundane cravings. Thus, Like Karl Marx, Soyinka satirised these crafty preachers who deceived their somnambulistic followers.
The play exposed the contradictions in blind faith and slavish following, and satired the too many social and political imbalances in Nigeria of the 60s. The ills Soyinka kicked against in the early 60s are even worse today. Have you not seen viral videos where so-called Pastors urinated in the mouths of their hypnotised worshippers, or farted on their faces, or sat on their heads, with yet some other members washing his legs on their heads?
They are told that is the only way to get rich or experience paradise. Religion had been termed opium of the people by Karl Marx, used as an instrument to fight wars as beast in Europe, instead of using it to give solace to the soul of man. Soyinka had theorised along that line.
Soyinka’s works may have humour; but he deploys his lyricism and poetry to entertain, enlighten and throw up topical issues, steeped in European mythology and the Yoruba spiritual and cultural traditions. To have won the Anisfield Wolf Lifetime Achievement Award as Soyinka did 2013 is a testament to his global essence.
Perhaps, Soyinka’s most famous quote is “I don’t know any other way to live than to wake up everyday armed with my convictions, not yielding them to the threat of danger and to the power and force of people who might despise me” (September 2, 2021). He believes in standing up to what is right even in the face of adversity and danger. Wole Soyinka wrote 52 books in 64 years. The books consist of plays, novels, poetry collections, essays, memoirs and translated works. Soyinka has written virtually on every topic – corruption, racism, religion, tradition, colonialism, identity crisis, neo-colonialism, greed, societal decay, empathy, rituals; fate, freewill, African traditional religion, evil, good, parenting skills, material exploitation, birth and death, social justice, survival; perseverance and so on. Surely, this man in Wole Soyinka has not died. This is because he does not “keep silent in the face of tyranny”.
As you hit your nonegenerian year (90), here is wishing this unusual human being many more years on mother earth in good health and peace that passeth all understanding. Yours sir, is Genesis 6:3.
Happy birthday, sir.
•Prof. Mike Ozekhome, SAN, is constitutional lawyer and human rights activist.
