(Being the presentation at the Wole Soyinka International Symposium @ The University of Lagos: Thursday 11 July, 2024)
Some days ago, an exercise in content analysis led me to an interesting discovery. For a people in search of a hero yearning for revolution through collectivist thought and democratic organization, it is not unusual to expect leaders among them to be perceived as having the capacity to innovate, create new system of thought, formulate a relevant ideology, inspire others and institutions. No wonder that more than fifty percent (50%) of those who have reacted (through the print, electronic and online media) to Wole Soyinka’s recent public statements and what they considered to be “actions” or “inactions” on his part felt he had fallen short of expectations.
From ordinary folks to wishful Wole watchers, Kongites, Ògúnites, etc, the expectation is that Wole Soyinka should write, speak and act on the basis of their own perception of who he is and the roles they have assigned to him. But Wole Soyinka is Wole Soyinka and nobody’s intellectual drone, including those who hold him in very high esteem.
The recent development brings to mind agelong controversies regarding the nature and essence of Wole Soyinka’s writings; especially his plays, poetry and novels. As his creative energy found relative tolerance in the post-colonial era and the products shone in various genres, individuals and groups confronted him with their critical perspectives. Among the prominent ones were the Ibadan/Ife-based ideological purists and the triumph rate of Chiweizu, Jemie and Madubuike. From them came, among other accusations, the charge of obscurity, of being deliberately difficult and hard to comprehend. And there appeared to be insistence on absolute adherence to certain rules or structures.
With the power of intellect, however, Wole Soyinka has been illuminating the world which other people govern. To give effect to the ideas which he generates, he has from time to time spoken or acted politically to provide flashes of insight or direction. This is in line with the calling of a writer, subsumed under the artist when I made the following observation:
In whichever category an artist finds himself or in whatever category an artist surfaces, the capacity to impart upon general consciousness is limitless, depending upon his control over images, symbolism and emotions. With constant demonstration and practice of his art, the artist succeeds in any of these ways in carrying the people to believe certain norms and certain worldviews and to accept certain philosophies while rejecting others. By the creative art manifested in these three directions, the artist plays the politician, and politics ultimately becomes one of the phenomena under the artist’s penchant influence1.
Social media warriors were quite prominent in the recent disputation. Jideofor Adibe’s mediatory commentary on the controversy was captioned “Wole Soyinka, ‘Obidients’ and ‘righteous incivility’.”2 It was an insightful and scholarly intervention. In his opinion, famous writers, activists and public intellectuals bear two heavy burdens. First, “they are expected to be permanently anti-establishment, even when they have friends and family members in the establishment … The second burden is that there is often a failure by critics to take into consideration the fact that such activist writers and public intellectuals (like all living systems) evolve and may have consciously or unconsciously moved away from their earlier convictions”3. He accused Wole Soyinka’s critics of mistakenly judging him by what he was some decades ago rather than showing appreciation of likely changes in his career trajectory. He ended up, however, classifying the exchanges between Wole Soyinka and Peter Obi’s supporters as asymmetrical, attributing the latter’s discourtesy to “moral concerns or the quest for justice by a weaker party”.
Now, time yet to do justice to this issue. Without attempting to freeze further debates on it, this is a special occasion to do justice. I wish to begin by summoning Soyinka’s antecedents or heritage to tastify and bear witness, or provide some lead.
Wole Soyinka’s Antecedents
Not long ago, Soyinka expressed some strong views “in the name of Shakespeare”.4 that makes him handy. There was Euripides before William Shakespeare and Bertolt Brecht after him. So, with those three, we take off.
Euripides, the Greek tragic poet who ranked with (but was more realistic than) Aeschylus and Sophocles, wrote many plays from the first production in 455B.C to 406B.C. Three of them were quite outstanding. Heraclidae, a patriotic play, was inspired by the Peloponnesian War. The Trojan Women was an indictment of war while the Bacchae, a ritualistic commentary on society, was essentially a protest for value reorientation whose inventive adaptation by Soyinka in The Bacchae of Euripides: A Communion Rite provides greater insight into human nature and the necessities of change.
From Euripides’ preoccupation with violence and conflicts, we move to the great William Shakespeare who emerged as a playwright in London in 1592 and ended in 1616 being recognized as the greatest playwright who ever lived. He wrote history plays with as much zeal and ingenuity as he wrote comedy and tragedy. Beginning with Othelo, followed by Lear and Macbeth, we are presented with clear oppositions of order and chaos, good and evil. From Shakespeare’s perspective, man must behave well and combat evil. It is a human vision that qualifies to be a philosophy, which is one of the reasons for the persistent appeal of his plays, yet he has been variously castigated for not propounding a philosophy or the tenets of a particular religion. It could not be taken away from him, however, that he was master of poetry, prose and blank verse which he commanded skillfully to complement one another.
Bertolt Brecht (1898 – 1956), the German dramatist and poet, was a Marxist who generated controversies by his revolutionary experiments in the theatre. He wrote in defence of the downtrodden in their struggle for survival in a disorganized world characterized by violence and disaster. From his plays, The Threepenny Opera attests to his fundamental hostility toward the capitalist social structure as well as his compassion for humanity. The link between him and Wole Soyinka goes beyond the source of Opera Wonyosi and common experience of exile. While Soyinka’s artistic creativity was blossoming in the 1970s he also founded Socialist Action Black Africa (SABA), an ideological movement reminiscent of Brecht’s propagation of Marxism.
Matching Words With Action
Wole Soyinka watchers have been most active in observing his roles in the democratic struggle and the quest for good governance all over the world but especially in Africa and Nigeria in particular. Credit is given to him from his early days by those who expected anti-establishment positions largely up to the year 2015, when the All Progressives Congress (APC), the political party to which he appeared to have been favourably disposed, took over the governance of Nigeria. The APC was formed in February 2013 as a result of a merger of Nigeria’s three largest opposition parties – the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), the Congress for Political Change (CPC) and the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) along with breakaway factions of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and the new Peoples Democratic Party (nPDP).
This is against the backdrop of the founding in October 1952, of the Pyrates Confraternity (originally based at the University of Ibadan) with “sworn enemies of all conventions” as the motto, his involvement in the Nigerian Labour Congress Strike of 1964, his fatalistic reaction to the 1964 – 1965 political crises in the Western Region of Nigeria, the visionary but dangerous initiative of the “Third Force” on the eve of the Nigerian Civil War which led to his incarceration in solitary confinement by the military regime during the war and his many years in exile while being hunted by the military under the regimes of General Yakubu Gowon and Sanni Abacha. Under Sanni Abacha’s tyrannical rule, a price was actually put on Soyinka’s head not only for facilitating the activities of NALICON and allegedly equipping the United States branch of the Pyrates Confraternity for terror and subversion in Nigeria but for being the intellectual powerhouse of NADECO. Central to the external effectiveness of the National Democratic Coalition (NADECO) against Abacha was, of course, the clandestine Radio Freedom which transformed first into Radio Democrat and later became Radio Kudirat after the assassination of Kudirat Abiola, wife of Chief M.K.O Abiola who won the June 12, 1993 presidential election in Nigeria that was annulled. With the crucial input of Kayode Fayemi – a key player in the external opposition to Abacha, resourceful scholar and solid intellectual grounded in strategic planning – Soyinka was able to offer NADECO the much needed external propaganda with consequences on the domestic situation in Nigeria.
From the beginning of the Fourth Republic in 1999 up to 2015, Wole Soyinka’s activism has also been widely acknowledged even though it is presumably a period of democratic rule and his often quoted “the man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny” would not necessarily apply. While keeping up with his record of defending democratic rights and egalitarian values, however, there have been expressions seeking to extract commitments from him on future writings and actions. To some, having been out at a younger age to demonstrate and like Mikkhail Bakunin the Russian revolutionary who was active in the First International, an apostle of violence who saw the act of destruction as a creative act, direct action on the part of Soyinka must continue forever. At this point, moral and political vision of his works not sufficient interventions. It must be followed by concrete political actions!
There are those who, nevertheless, have expressed genuine concerns. To them, how can a literary titan whose works and actions have been celebrated across the globe and have had considerable impacts in various parts of African make worrisome statements on some burning contemporary issues and be silent on some others? These are not those who wish to claim prerogative to decide what constitutes a Soyinkan action. There is need to acknowledge a problem here. One vital aspect, the role of the press, and this has been pointed out by Soyinka himself:
The press remains a contributory factor to the frustration of participants in public discourse. Misreporting, extrapolations, distortions, arbitrary expansions and misplaced summaries, false attributions, even mind-numbing fabrications have resulted in endless and pointless, exasperating debates over what was never said, over non-existent propositions, over non-issues and false deductions.5
“End SARS” and related matters, including violence during elections that are supposed to characterize democracy (simple and legitimate choices of leaders and representatives) and in other areas of social engineering in the process of governance resurface again. His humane political stand has always been dictated by what he appreciates as the essence and evil of violence in society and politics, in the processes of pursuing democracy and good governance. Biodun Jeyifo was succinct when he stated that: “At the bottom of Soyinka’s artistic sensibilities and political activism is a profound and unflinching preoccupation with the place of violence in human affairs and also in the processes of nature …”6
About a decade ago, two great scholars had summed up Wole Soyinka’s creative work and activism admirably. According to Toyin Falola:
The unquestionable hero in the condemnation of the post-colonial state, sometimes as a lone ranger, on other occasions as a member of the collective, has been Wole Soyinka, who has been the country’s foremost writer and critic for over half a century. The most multitalented of them all, and the preeminent public intellectual, all his writings, irrespective of the genre, carry a compelling universal message, applicable not only to Nigeria but to all countries where similar conditions exist. A crusader with an uncommon skill and talent, his prolific energy has been used to oppose injustice, cruelty, and corruption. He can be emulated but not imitated.7
From his own perspective, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o saw him as “… a remarkable man of letters, action and conscience. He is the Byronic hero, or even better, a renaissance figure, dashing, defiant and daring. His writings – plays, poems, memoirs, and novels – carry one common banner: the man dies in him who keeps silent in the face of tyranny. As a writer and public intellectual who has voiced his concerns over major happenings in the different parts of the continent over the last fifty years and more, he has become the moral and democratic conscience of Africa.”8
Quite an apt assessment. Without prejudice to those with the perspectives which demand instrumental or concessional deployment of his words and action in the socio-political space, the ideas, statements and actions of great writers are bound to provoke splendid criticism. If Shakespeare is sometimes thought to have changed his spokesman and viewpoint from play to play and Ibsen is commonly said to change his viewpoint from play to play, it is the totality, the interplay, which critics emphasise that one needs to be concerned with about Wole Soyinka. In this regard, beyond using art as a venue to inspire and restore hope in the midst of darkness and despair he has, within the confines of existential factors, been complementing words with actions to prop pillars of democracy and instigate good governance. The goal is to transform society in his various incarnations as Eni Ògún, Kongí or Àǹjònú. As it takes more than casual reading to appreciate his major works, interventions and chronicles, only the truly discerning could continuously decipher the dimensions of his calculated actions.
At 90, caught between the fulfilment of his mission as a playwright, poet, novelist, eassyist and political activist, and responding to the waves of critical antennas of those who have deposited various socio-political responsibilities at his feet, Wole Soyinka has reaffirmed his position. Using the vexatious issue of ethnic bias for which he has been accused as a pointer, he states:
I am not yet a convert to Igbophobia, but Sonny Igboanugo should not be held responsible for that failure. Some individuals are slow learners and, to make matters worse, I suspect it is too late for some of us, no matter what others may consider as the Laws of Reciprocity. One accepts challenges, and thankfully I feel re-energized whenever confronted by a new one. The problem is that one is still engaged in more meaningful projects, objects that institutions across the globe seem to consider have greater claims on humanity than distractions by Apostles of Hate. Alas, not all distractions can be passed over, Those that inject torrents of pus into human minds, especially those of impressionable youth, must be staunched at source.9
NOTES
1. Tunde Adeniran, The Politics of Wole Soyinka, Third Edition (Ibadan: Bookcraft, 2014) p.6
2. https://www.premiumtimesng.com/opinion/700619. Also published by Leadership, Vanguard and The News Chronicle.
3. Ibid
4. Wole Soyinka, Of Power and Freedom (Ibadan: Bookcraft, 2022) pp.370 – 379
5. Wole Soyinka, Interventions I. Justice … Funeral Rites (Ibadan: Bookcraft, 2008) p.xi
6. Biodun Jeyifo, Wole Soyinka: Politics, Poetics and Postcolonialism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) p.284
7. Toyin Falola, “Literary Imaginations and Nation Building in Nigeria”, in Toyin Falola, The Humanities in Africa (Austin, Texas: Pan African University Press, 2016) p.248
8. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, “The Conscience of Africa”, Ivor Agyeman-Duah/Ogochukwu Promise (eds) Crucible of the Ages: Essays in Honour of Wole Soyinka at 80 (Ibadan: Bookcraft, 2014) pp. 6 – 7
9. Wole Soyinka, Interventions XII: BAITING IGBOPHOBIA – The Sunny Igboanugo Thesis (Ibadan: Bookcraft, 2024) pp. 5 – 6.
