I want to thank the members of the Pyrates Confraternity for their doggedness in pursuing me all these years to speak at one of these events. Having failed to deliver this lecture on two different occasions, I am pleased that the doggedness of Mr. Chiemeka Ozumba and his friends has paid off and I have the last laugh. I feel quite honoured to be here especially given that this is the nearest we will come to a Church celebration of this great man even if St. Jeros Church were open. Having just presided over the funeral of the distinguished jurist, Justice Chukwudifu Oputa a week ago, I feel quite honoured to be part of this historic celebration and at this stage.
Like the rest of us, my introduction to Wole Soyinka was motivated more by the need to massage my ego and feel a sense of being educated too. I do not recall how I first heard of Professor Wole Soyinka as a great writer. However, the publication of The Man Died was my introduction to the man. One of my teachers in the Seminary spoke about the book in class and immediately after, I asked if I could read it. He said he still had the last ten pages to finish and could I remind him after supper. I did and he handed the book to me. I took it, spent most of the night reading and finished it the next day. When I returned it to my teacher, he smiled and asked how I had found the book. I think he suspected my response so, I simply said, Fine. He saw from my face that I was not exactly excited and took back the book. It was the first time I would finish a book and not be able to tell anyone exactly what the book was all about.
I was determined to read a Wole Soyinka book and so I went in search and found, one, titled, The Interpreters. I felt as if this would interprete whatever I had missed in The Man Died. I plunged into it immediately. I read the first 10, then 20 and 30 pages and made no headway. None of my mates in the Seminary was reading Wole Soyinka nor were there colleagues whom I could turn to for help. I gave up and did not finish the book. My ego was rather bruised especially as I had taken up the challenge of reading Soyinka so I could also count myself educated enough to contribute to any discussion on the man if the need arose.
After these two books, I thought I would rather abandon this and go back to reading people like Chinua Achebe. Then I went to the bookshop in Jos and tried again. This time, I asked one of the staff if he could recommend a Wole Soyinka book to me. I think you should read, The Trial of Brother Jero especially as you are in the Seminary. You will like it. I paid for it and was happy that it did not look big. I read it at one sitting, intrigued by the story line. I was even happier over the fact that I realized that perhaps I was not as uneducated as I had thought. I did not become a serious Wole Soyinka reader as such, but I became interested in his works.
Our paths did not cross and like millions of other Nigerians, I was just content with knowing that he was a famous man from my country. A first meeting took place much later in far away Ohio, in the United States. I had been invited to present a paper at a Conference on Constitutionalism. My flight had arrived a bit late and I got to the venue of the meeting around 7pm. I had barely put my bags down when my host said to me, You must meet Professor Soyinka because he will leave immediately after his keynote address. I had jumped at the thought that I would finally meet the man, but was disappointed that it was not going to be a long meeting but I was delighted to take advantage of this rare opportunity. It was my first meeting, but it was memorable because Professor Soyinka cheated me. I forgave but have not forgotten and he himself might not even remember. This was what happened.
When we got to where he was seated, he was alone with only a bottle of red wine for company. He had already drunk nearly half of it. When he offered me a glass, I was quite pleased to accept the offer. He then poured me a glass. We toasted. He finished his glass and filled it up again. I had just had my first sip. Then he filled his glass again. We drank and chatted, but he made greater progress than myself. Next, he emptied the bottle into his glass again and that was it. I could not challenge him for obvious reasons but I felt rather cheated. But that was not the end because this serial offender was soon to repeat his offence again.
The second instance was in Benin when Comrade Adams Oshiomohle invited us to the One Man, One Vote march in Benin. I arrived Government House at about 8.15am and the sitting room was full of many other colleagues of the Comrade Governor. There was Professor Soyinka sitting down with a bottle of red wine planted right in front of him. I went straight to greet him. After the pleasantries, I decided to appeal to my moral authority to denounce his action. Prof, it is barely 8am and you are already drinking wine so early? Now, come on, he said with that baritone of his as if ignoring my clerical authority: Is it not you Catholics who encourage us to have communion? That is exactly what I am doing. As if to let me know that I was wasting my time, he lifted up his half empty bottle, made no attempt to ask if I was interested and poured himself another long glass. My mind went back to Ohio, I made a mental note but I was too polite to complain. I know one day he will pay for his many sins. Today is a good a chance as any for him to redeem himself.
I will like to do three things in the course of this lecture. First, I will like to briefly look at the celebrant and appreciate his exceptional gifts and expressions of his genius by way of his troublesomeness and daring rascality. Secondly, I will look at the theme of rebellion and revolt as a metaphor for prophesy and argue for its nobility in nation building. Thirdly, I will address the theme of religion in society, a theme that has often appeared in the intellectual universe of the celebrant. By way of conclusion, I will look at the future of the vision for a new form of literature in which art imitates life.
1: Wole Soyinka and the birth of a Genius:
I want to thank God for sending this great son of Africa to this great country called, Nigeria. Whatever may be Wole Soyinkas claims as to how he got to be where he is, whether he believes God has brought him here or not, whether he wishes to celebrate or attribute his profound contributions to chance, intelligence, or Ifa divination, I am far from being concerned. All I know is that I am personally eternally grateful to God that he was born here and not there.
As usual, many people will ask, what is Bishop Kukah doing with these people? Has he joined them? I often feel quite glad and vindicated when partisans who believe they own you raise these questions feeling that you are sleeping with the enemy. Some two weeks ago, I was at a lecture in Lagos organized I think by Asiwaju Tinubus office. Most of the members were APC partisans and I knew that. I had quietly taken my seat when someone came to say that my friend Governor Amaechi whom I did not even know was in the hall insisted that I should come and sit beside him. I did and I had barely sat down when he said to me; I had told them that you are a PDP sympathizer. I told him that it made me feel quite glad because I had heard some of my PDP friends say that I am an APC sympathizer. In any case, I said, he had been a PDP stalwart.
Three weeks ago, I was at the mosque in Sokoto for the wedding of the Governors daughter. In shock, one or two of my friends asked what I had gone to do in a mosque Someone called me to ask what I was going to do at Wole Soyinkas birthday when the man is supposed to be an unbeliever. I told my friend I was going to baptize him as part of his birthday celebration. He seemed to have believed me, but that ended our conversation. I am quite pleased that God has offered me these very rare opportunities and I do thank those individuals, groups and communities who keep opening their doors and letting me into their world. I do not take this honour lightly.
Our African cultures are not favourably disposed to the notion of protest. Obedience and compliance have always been presented as noble ideals required for forging a collective sense of family and community. At meetings, the young are supposed to be seen and not heard. Younger people can often be scolded for daring to speak while elders are speaking. Consequently, obeisance has been built into the thread of African life. A parent who concedes to a young person the right to contribute to public discussion in the presence of elders would often be considered to be encouraging irresponsibility and disobedience.
This applies to the women in African society. Men who give their wives license to speak are equally considered to be effeminate. How often for example do we hear the expression; Imagine her, men are talking and she is also talking. This is in spite of the fact that the woman in question may be a Professor and the man a driver or a cook. I make this point merely to underscore the fact that we need to thank the parents of our celebrant for coping with this young man whose troubles started too early in his life.
I am sure that perhaps more than any other work, Wole Soyinkas Memoir, You Must Set Forth at Dawn offers the reader the most penetrating insight into the life of this great man. Not only do I consider it his greatest work, but I believe it should stand shoulder to shoulder with such phenomenal biographies as Mandelas, Long Walk to Freedom. What is most interesting for me is not so much how it illuminates the man, but the fact that in the book, one sees clearly the biography of a man who had revolt in his DNA. Having ascended to such heights, only very few admirers of the man know how much has been packed into his life or the many things he tried to do in life and rebelled against himself. Sending this young man to the University of Leeds was a risk that only a man of the faith of his parents could have undertaken. Not unexpectedly, Leeds proved to be both a laboratory for his literary experiments and an incubator encasing the seeds of his genius.
His memoir presents the reader with literally every angle of the celebrants middle and adult life. You encounter the early stirrings of anger, revolt and outright defiance in his years in Leeds. The language in the poem, Telephone Conversation is dripping with veiled contempt and seething anger but it is also a warning of the lurking genius looking for an escape route. There is evidence in this poem that here was a rough diamond waiting to be polished and that if only he could stand still, sooner than later, the world would definitely stop and take notice.
His experiments with his literary talent showed a young man who was not afraid to sail so close to the wind. In 1959 he wrote a play titled, The Invention. It was supposed to climax with an explosion killing white scientists who were conducting research to determine racial types in South Africa. Strange enough, when the play was finally staged at the Royal Court Theatre, he state that the explosion refused to come on cue! Here was already a clear lesson, but WS did not learn that perhaps, contemplating wiping out white people even if in a play will not be such a good idea to be pursued. His sights were set on a project not far from the idea of the play.
For WS, white oppression, injustice, the conquest and occupation of African lands and resources was an unforgivable crime. He was determined to play a role in ridding the continent of these usurpers. He and his colleagues believed that the liberation of Africa was a project that was within their reach. In his words he believed that he and his friends:.would be the transforming auxiliaries of an inchoate substance, a yet undefined entity of space that just happened to be called Nigeria, Gold Coast, the Rhodesias, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Cameroon, etc. The future spread itself before us, a vision of the re-assemblage of a much abused, much violated people on whose head the ultimate insult had been heaped-broken in pieces and then glued together like the shell of the tortoise in folk mythology. We were unstoppable.
While in the University, he was really in search for a platform to realize his dreams. His education was also important only to the extent that it served as a platform for learning and acquiring the skills to embark on this mission of liberation of Africa. He took a bold step in order to actualize this dream. He went on to enroll in the officer training corps of the University of Leeds in 1955, opting, in his words, for Infantry corps. He apparently had not prepared himself for the implications of his foolhardiness. For, barely a year later, he was summoned to go to fight his fellow Africans in Egypt in the Suez war in 1956. He thought he had joined the training corps to exploit the British system so as to prepare himself for the liberation of South Africa. He wrote to decline the call up, only to realize that he was liable for court martial. Getting out of this impending court martial shows the celebrants ultimate rascality as genius. He devised a get away plan that only his kind of mind could conjure.
First, realizing that he was bound by the oath since he had appended his signature (and that meant he had no reason not to answer his call up to go and fight in Egypt), he came up with a most bizarre plot. He convinced himself that he had actually recited the oath in Yoruba and not English and therefore, the oath had lost its potency and efficacy. Again, he reasoned, even if these words had passed his tongue, he would cleanse his tongue so as to eradicate any further feeling of guilt. He went straight into the Mess and bought a glass of sherry to wash down and cleanse his tongue. He then hid his kit somewhere and fled! Last time I checked, AWOL, desertion is still a crime. Getting off one AWOL was not enough and he was still not done with wanting to save the world.
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