Ninety-cannon salute to Wole Soyinka, By Olatunji Ariyomo

Professor Wole Soyinka

In the African literary precinct, where minds form thoughts and thoughts mould minds, Wole Soyinka, until perhaps there is another revelation in his class, will remain the definitive African confounding literary enigma and the actual definition of literature itself for eons to come.

When Oluwole Akinwande Babatunde Soyinka, Africa’s first Nobel Laureate in Literature, clocked 80 in 2014, I raised an 80-cannon salute in his honour as one of Africa’s most enigmatic pathfinders. At 90, the bard remains a torch-bearer of continental excellence and an inspirational global export from Africa to the world. The ‘90’ volley count is an intentional multiple of the traditional 21-gun salute in recognition of his exceptional humanity and an acknowledgment of Ogun, his companion deity.

In the African literary precinct, where minds form thoughts and thoughts mould minds, Wole Soyinka, until perhaps there is another revelation in his class, will remain the definitive African confounding literary enigma and the actual definition of literature itself for eons to come. Granted that Kongi is not given to wanton adulation or competitive overgeneralisation, especially the typically African tendency to rank, I am not Kongi and neither is this bias without basis – or reckless without a just cause.

There were great African writers before Soyinka happened to Africa. Some wrote in their indigenous languages and as a result had a restricted audience. There were and there are still great African writers who are/were contemporaries of Soyinka. Many wrote in the language of yore, leaving the reader with the literary taste that the writer was attempting to recreate the African past. Not Soyinka. He communicated in the contemporary language and with such suaveness that was both awesome and appealing. There will continue to be great African writers after Soyinka. He is however not just a great African writer. Neither is Kongi just another literary icon. He is literature. His life sealed and cemented his place in African history. Soyinka’s being has come to represent a theatre in 3D, as his very life embodies the very substance great dramas are made of. At a relatively young age, when many feared to dare, Kongi, a one-man battalion stormed the broadcasting house in the then Western region of Nigeria, and successfully replaced the recorded lies of one of the thieving politicians at the time, with his. That was Soyinka, literature in motion.

By the time the Igbo people of Eastern Nigeria were locked in a titanic survival battle with the side claiming to represent a united Nigeria, Soyinka saw through the charade of the kind of unity on offer and dared to embrace a destiny in opposition to the leading tendencies back then – he backed the right of the Igbo people to self-determination if that was what they desired as a people. The core of his stance was very simple, the Igbos had the inalienable right as humans to determine how they would want to exist as a people. For so daring, Soyinka was hunted, hounded, arrested, and imprisoned. That was Soyinka, literature in motion.

Then came the Nobel prize. Prizes, especially super-prestigious types of the calibre of the Nobel have a way of changing their beneficiaries. Most would begin to hang out only with the rulers, while then doing their bidding. Not Soyinka. Rather, Soyinka became more Soyinka. From the battle to erase apartheid in South Africa, to the precarious and dangerous challenge he mounted against vicious military rulers, Soyinka was at the forefront of civil action for the protection of the ordinary people from arbitrary rule of the juntas. How the Ibrahim Babangida government loved to dismiss Soyinka as a dramatist! But the dramatist was one of the forces who ensured Babangida was forced into submission and had to abdicate in a hurry when the hearth became too hot. That was Soyinka, literature in motion.

Soyinka in the public service. Before the ultimate showdown with Babangida, Kongi, following a call akin to an ‘if you know how to do it, then come do it’ dare from Babangida, accepted to establish and serve as the foundational chairman of the Federal Road Safety Corp (FRSC). Many had expected the crusader to fail at this assignment. Not Soyinka. As Nigerians would still admit today, Soyinka’s era in the road safety corps remains a watershed in the nation’s history. That was the era when no officer of the Corp would collect bribes from anybody, even though their sister organisation, the Nigeria Police, was notorious at the time for only two things – bribery and corruption. As Dele Momodu recently revealed, when an attempt was made to soil Soyinka’s reputation with a smear campaign, news hounds from the African Concord were dispatched to get the juicy details of the ’embezzlement charge.’ Kongi, though 28 years behind the passage of the Freedom of Information Act, personally wrote to the bankers of the FRSC with the instruction to make all their accounts public! That was Soyinka, literature in motion.

While Wole Soyinka’s predilection as signposted by these experiences is about integrity, what is right, and what is just, irrespective of tribe, race, religion, or social status – his later life would cement his place as an avowed advocate of universal justice – no matter who the victim is. This is where he stands shoulder higher than any of his contemporaries. While some of them were perennially locked in the defense of their kin, Soyinka’s mind transcended Ake or his Oduduwa clan and captured the universal spirit that defined and separated truly great beings from the rest.

Soyinka the philosopher could be glimpsed from The Interpreters, where the bard sought to know whether it was appropriate to insist on a spot in the water, whereas the water as an entity was definitely constantly moving. In the Trial of Brother Jero, it would be difficult to resist a good laugh as the prophet successfully predicted the promotion of Chume to Chief Messenger, with an additional prophecy still that he would become Chief Clerk. Soyinka in that work clearly saw tomorrow, as every antic of the main character has now become the trademark and a powerful tool through which self-professed spokesmen for God swindle unsuspecting folks in 2024 Nigeria. Soyinka inspires. Any student activist in the past 30 years, would either have used or have heard the famous words “The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny” taken from The Man Died: Prison Notes of Wole Soyinka. It remains the number one rallying cry to free the souls of the undecided for battle against forces of repression in Nigeria’s unending Armageddon of civil unrest against abusive use of power and positions against the interests of the masses. Of Soyinka, John Updike in Hugging the Shore (New York: Knopf, 1983) says, “he is remembered in Nigeria with awe, both for a political boldness that landed him in prison and for a commanding intellect that is manifest in every genre he tackles’.” And what do you make of the poem, “Telephone Conversation”? Read the last verse, again;

“THAT’S DARK, ISN’T IT?” “Not altogether.
Facially, I am brunette, but madam, you should see
The rest of me. Palm of my hand, soles of my feet
Are a peroxide blonde. Friction, caused—
Foolishly, madam—by sitting down, has turned
My bottom raven black—One moment madam!”—sensing
Her receiver rearing on the thunderclap
About my ears—“Madam,” I pleaded, “wouldn’t you rather
See for yourself?”
– Wole Soyinka in Telephone Conversation

90-cannon salute to Soyinka! The African god of literature is 90. Iba!

Olatunji Ariyomo is an engineer and development strategist. He tweets @olatunjiariyomo