Wole Soyinka: The lion still roars at 89

Written literature has three genres, namely poetry, prose, and drama. And one of the founding fathers of the modern Nigerian cum African literature is Wole Akiwande Soyinka, who will celebrate his eighty-nine (89th) birthday on July 13, 2023.

His remarkable imprints on the sands of time in the field of literature is both tremendous and indelible. It is his writings, spanning all the genres of literature, that defined him and earned him a revered place in the pantheon of the world’s literary greats.

Born on July 13, 1934 in Ake, Abeokuta, which is in Ogun state, Wole Soyinka was a precocious child, who showed great promise that he would excel in the world of literature. A contemporary of Chinua Achebe and Christopher Okigbo, who were literary giants, he attended the prestigious University of Ibadan in Nigeria, and Leeds University, Britain.

Not unexpectedly, he taught at various world-class universities, including the universities of Ibadan and Lagos, and rose to become a professor of literature. And, he taught and groomed students, who have made their marks in the field of literature.

In addition to being a professor of literature, Soyinka is revered for the quality of his literary outputs, which earned him global acclaim and recognition. But his works like those of Christopher Okigbo are dense and impenetrable. That is why Chinweizu, Onwuchekwa Jemie, and Ihechukwu Madubuike wrote the book titled “Towards the Decolonization of The African Literature”, which is condemnatory of their dense and incomprehensible works. For example, J. P Clark’s ‘Abiku’, which is accessible, can be understood easily, while Soyinka’s ‘Abiku’ is recondite, which made it difficult to be understood by lay men.

But the works of Chinua Achebe, especially his trilogy and Okot P’Bitek’s ‘Songs of Lawino’ are comprehensible as they are written based partly on oral African literary traditions. They are not wholly Eurocentric.

But in spite of the criticisms of impenetrability levelled against some of his works, Soyinka won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1986. It is the world’s highest literary prize. He won the Nobel Prize for literature at a time when Nigeria was in the firm grip of military dictatorship.

His churning out of creative works, which are characterized by profundity of thought and artistic excellence, culminated in his winning that literary prize. His winning the Nobel prize for literature in 1986 is a testament to his possession of intellectual wizardry in drama, his area of specialty. He is a great dramatist and playwright.

And it is an indisputable fact that Wole Soyinka, who is an internationally recognized literary icon, is Nigeria’s cultural and arts ambassador to the world. He embodies the Nigerian spirit of hard-work, resilience, and pursuit of artistic excellence. Professor Wole Soyinka is the pride of all black people in the world and a role model to millions of Nigerians of all ages, who belong to many different religious and ethnic backgrounds.

But it is not only in the areas of literary arts and writing that he has excelled. He is a social critic and activist in his own right. He is believed to be the mystery gunman who stormed a radio station in the western region and caused his own tape to be played on the radio instead of that of a revered politician, who was one of the major political actors in the first republic. At that time, which was in the 1960s, Alhaji Tafawa Balewa was our prime minister; and the western region was embroiled in political turbulence.