Toast To Soyinka & Olatunji Dare

An ingrate is but a robber in disguise. I am thrilled to celebrate, on the same platform today, two great Nigerians who have impacted greatly on our collective intellectual environment and whose birthdays providentially fall within a few days of each other. Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka turned 90 on July 13 while Emeritus Professor Olatunji Dare will clock 80 on July 17.

Armed with a calabash full of frothing palm wine, I raise an elbow in a twin celebration of our own WS, the irrepressible Kongi, Eniogun, the man of iron on the one hand; and the unassuming four-star general of journalism, dean of satire and incredibly prescient public intellectual, Olatunji Dare, on the other.
Let’s take them one after the other.

Kongi

Soyinka is 90! Our very own teacher, playwright, poet, novelist, hunter, philosopher, rebel, musician, essayist, literary stylist, cultural beacon, social engineer and public intellectual has defied all odds to breast the tape of his 90th year.

If you ask, what’s in a number, you may attract the riposte, what’s NOT in a number. In their own esoteric way, numerologists break 90 into 9 and 0 and postulate that Number 9 brings us the energies of completion, universal love, inner-wisdom, and compassion while 0 adds its own vibrations of eternity and infinity — a reminder that we have access to infinite resources within ourselves when we remain connected to our spiritual essence.

A little over 50 years ago, many people who analysed his trajectory as an activist of the ‘talk-and-do’ hue, swore that the young Soyinka was destined to die young without even the remote possibility of having a nice-looking corpse. But whoever is monitoring when the crab goes to bed should prepare for a long vigil because the crab does not go to bed early (and the crab is Soyinka’s zodiac sign)!

Ninety years is special, culturally, spiritually and commemoratively. It is called the nonagintennial or granite anniversary. There are only about 22 million nonagenarians in existence, constituting 0.28 percent of the global population of 8.1 billion people. It is the privileged club of the anointed, those fated to be among the last set to tell the story of their generation — and Soyinka’s generation of intellectual elites was our golden generation.

It is not given to many people to be of abiding relevance to their country as Soyinka has been for six decades. By the time my path crossed that of Soyinka at the University of Ife in the 70s, he had already achieved fame (his foes will say, notoriety) and was a highly sought academic. I wasn’t a spring chicken myself having cut my teeth in journalism at DRUM Publications before returning to school.
As president of the students’ union, I knew that I needed the collaboration of those who had seen it all before and who would be there as trusted allies if things turned awry. In that sense, Soyinka was an uncommon counsellor and backbone. It was from him that I learnt that what matters in life is not the ‘ariwo ojà’, but the nobility of your convictions and the courage with which you pursue your ideals using all your talents, no matter the odds. He shares that honour in my life with his cousin, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, Dr. Tai Solarin and Chief Gani Fawehinmi.

I pity those who, because of a disagreement over political perspectives, think that they can diminish Soyinka’s stature as a global intellectual. Great as the invention of social media is, it has, sadly been turned into a lynching machine by those that Nelson Ottah, (one of those who taught me how to chew the journalistic cud) would have described as “intellectual piccaninnies”.

Former presidential aspirant, Kingsley Moghalu has this to say on the matter: “Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka is a principled fighter for justice in our country and around the world. He is a phenomenon that unlettered and uncultured people may not fully understand in an age of lazy social media in which many don’t read or think deep.”

In 2014 when he turned 80, I invoked Providence to spare our elderly friend and pathfinder for many more years, especially as he still looked so comely and strong. In many ways, he is “a tree that makes a forest”, as I titled my column in Daily Trust at the time (https://dailytrust.com/kongi-a-tree-that-makes-a-forest/) In just one more decade, if the Heavens permit, we’ll be gathered to usher him into the club of centenarians. Happy birthday, Prof!

Olatunji Dare

By the time I enrolled for a Masters degree at the University of Lagos, I was already an editor at DRUM. I knew a few of the teachers on the faculty, like Prof Alfred Opubor and Dr. Idowu Sobowale. I was later to meet another respected member who made a strong impression on me — Prof. Frank Ugboaja. We hit it off straight away as friends. Ugboaja said he would be proud to supervise my final thesis and I looked forward with excitement to it.

But Fate decreed otherwise. Ugboaja died. In the meantime I had also become familiar with other faculty members, especially those whose speciality tallied with editorial expertise. The then Dr Olatunji Dare easily stood out. Among the postgraduate students, the whisper making the rounds was that Dare was the first and only student of the faculty so far to make a first class and that he had only returned to UNILAG from the United States out of patriotic commitment after finishing his Masters and PhD at Columbia and Indiana universities respectively.

Dare’s Editorial Writing class opened the eyes of many strutting professional peacocks to the reality that they still had a lot to learn to become field generals. His style was collaborative rather than autocratic. He preferred to show ‘how’ rather than pontificate. He deservedly won the respect and friendship of his students.

When he took his talent and art to Nigeria’s flagship newspaper, The Guardian, his brilliance was acknowledged on the national stage. His award-winning Tuesday column was a must-read. Indeed, his satirical writings have become the subject of two Masters theses. He was to serve as editorial page editor and chair of the Editorial Board of the newspaper for almost 10 years.

Dare resigned from the Guardian when the newspaper’s proprietor chose to apologise to the military junta of General Abacha rather than continue to suffer financial loss on account of the shutting down of the newspaper over the June 12 crisis. Abacha was a usurper and the newspaper clearly said so through its powerful editorials and op-eds, many of which had Dare’s imprimatur.

Embarrassed that his publisher would choose acquiescence with despotism over principled commitment to propriety and the rule of law, Dare resigned from The Guardian without an immediate Plan B. Nigerian journalism has produced many heroes of the June 12 struggle. Dare was one of them. Unable to find meaningful media work and facing constant harassment, he left Nigeria in 1996 to take up a faculty position at Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois, USA.

His book, “Diary of a Debacle: Tracking Nigeria’s Failed Democratic Transition, 1986-1994”, is, perhaps, the most authoritative work on the military’s democratic transition programme in Nigeria’s Third Republic.

The oak is the symbol of octogenary. Just as the oak is the source of durable timber, Dare has been instrumental in not just helping to produce some of the finest editorial writers in contemporary Nigerian journalism, but has also been part of the movement to elevate public discourse and mobilise public opinion for the common good. He still writes a weekly column in The Nation from his base in the United States.

Both Soyinka and Dare are Cancerians with the crab as their zodiac sign. Experts say that the symbol of the crab offers a key to understanding Cancers’ preternatural ability to know things without knowing how they know them. I raise an elbow in a hearty toast again. Birthday blessings!