Wole Soyinka - The Writer as a Citizen

International Herald Tribune

LAGOS, Nigeria: When Nigerian Nobel literature laureate Wole Soyinka contemplates the role of a writer in society, he defines it in terms of action.

In 1965, upset that a politician who had rigged the vote was about to claim victory in a radio broadcast, Soyinka, then 31 and already a famous writer, stormed the radio station armed with a pistol, and substituted the politician's tape with one denouncing the usurper.

Arrested and charged, Soyinka was acquitted on a technicality. For the writer, poet and playwright, now aged 73, it was one incident in a long career of politics — interspersed with arrests, spells in jail and years of exile — combined with a literary and teaching career.

"There came that moment when the robbery of the people's voice was about to be legitimized," Soyinka, recalling the event, told The Associated Press in an interview in Lagos. "And I happened to be one of maybe three, four, five people who knew. It was a moment when an individual had to take a decision ... take stock of yourself and act."

Soyinka's most recent arrest was in 2004, when he was taken by police amid swirls of tear gas for participating in a protest in Nigeria's biggest city Lagos against President Olusegun Obasanjo's government. He was released without charge hours later.

Age has not slowed the writer, whose hoary Afro and matching white beard are recognizable around the world. In between lecture tours, a recent residency at Harvard University's W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research and work at the Black Mountain Institute — the international literature center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas — Soyinka finds time to be in Nigeria every other week. Here, he attends political meetings, marches, news conferences and issues statements in response to the unfolding political situation.

"The writer is first and foremost a citizen and the writer's responsibility is not different from that of a citizen," Soyinka said, nursing a glass of wine in the garden of a Lagos gallery where he came to see an exhibition of Nigerian paintings. For him the only difference is that the writer can make good use of language, "the most immediate means of communication. But that's about all."

Ahead of presidential elections due in April, the African Renaissance Party led by Soyinka is backing Pat Utomi, a university professor and candidate of the African Democratic Congress. Utomi, who promises to break with Nigeria's past of corrupt misrule and bring intellectual rigor to government, is an outsider in a field dominated by powerful establishment figures.

The April 21 polls would set up the first civilian-to-civilian transfer of power in Nigeria's history since independence from Britain in 1960. Previous electoral transitions have been interrupted by annulments or military coups. The current campaign already has seen violence, and a feud between a top candidate and Obasanjo — who is barred from running because of term limits.

Soyinka traces his activist disposition to his childhood in Abeokuta — a hometown he shares with Obasanjo, though the two did not meet until adulthood. In the 1940s, the city's women rose up against taxes imposed by the local chief under British colonial rule. In his much-acclaimed memoirs, "Ake: Years of Childhood," Soyinka describes the uprising and the role he played as a messenger for the women, which put him in a position to hear the arguments of adults reflecting political and social divisions.

Soyinka says his subsequent habit of confronting authorities had its seeds in that early political education, "and maybe my combative temperament."

In his latest book, "You Must Set Forth at Dawn," published in 2006, Soyinka recounts the dilemma he faced in 1967 as Nigeria plunged into a secessionist war in the southeastern region that called itself Biafra, pitting rebels against implacable federal authorities in Lagos — then the capital — in the wake of an orgy of sectarian killings that had swept the country. As an informal go-between for elements that sought "a third way" to defuse the tensions, Soyinka approached Obasanjo, a regional military commander at the time.

According to the account, his apparent betrayal by Obasanjo resulted in his arrest and detention in solitary confinement for more than two years by the Nigerian military government of the time. These experiences, which led to his first exile from Nigeria, are documented in his 1972 book, "The Man Died".

There was to be another unsuccessful collaboration between the two men whose paths crossed again and again as Nigeria's postcolonial history unfolded.

As military ruler in the late 1970s, Obasanjo provided diplomatic cover for an escapade led by Soyinka to Brazil to recover an ancient Yoruba bronze head, Ori Olokun, stolen from Nigeria in still unclear circumstances in the 1940s. Soyinka and his companions stole what they thought was the head, only to find out it was fake. Their cover was blown by elements in Obasanjo's government, and they barely escaped from Brazil without arrest. Meanwhile, the real bronze head was at the British Museum.

"That madcap episode embarrasses me until this moment," said Soyinka, who is now a bitter critic of Obasanjo, accusing him of dictatorial ambitions.

Soyinka also dealt closely with another military ruler, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, under whose government he undertook to set up a road safety corps to try to stem the carnage of accidents on the country's dangerous highways. He broke with Babangida as his regime grew increasingly authoritarian.

Gen. Sani Abacha, who came after Babangida, responded to the writer's criticisms by sending a death squad after him. Soyinka fled into exile in 1994, returning only after the dictator's death four years later.

Some of Soyinka's critics have accused him of having a fascination for people in power.

"Soyinka is evidently obsessed with temporal power," said Adewale Maja-Pearce, a Nigerian writer who has written critical studies of Soyinka. Citing his relationship with Obasanjo and Babangida in particular, Maja-Pearce argues that the writer was usually the one diminished by such encounters.

The 1986 Nobel literature prize winner — the first black writer to get the award — insists on the need to engage all classes of Nigerians.

"People sometimes take a snobbish attitude, saying we cannot engage on this level because it's not pure enough for us," said Soyinka. "On all levels humanity is involved. And wherever humanity is involved, that's my constituency."

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Comments

[Nga Adolph]

The likes of intellectuals like Wole Soyinka are the sort of intellectuals Cameroon needs.Bold and darehardy.Unfortunately,our intellectuals have become conmen and to say the least "feymen".Rubbing shoulders with the worst of corrupt politicians to gain favours.Denigrating and soiling their academic robes for bread and butter.We need revolutionary intellectuals who are neutral and play their role of "Watchers of democracy".

Nga Adolph.
Leuven(Belgium).

[Ma Mary]

http://www.kwenu.com/publications/odengalasi/soyinka_blood.htm

One of Soyinka's problematic accomplishments was the creation of the Pyrates Confraternity at the University of Ibadan in 1952, when he was a student there. There is a lot of material out there on the ether about this club, which spawned a slew of imitators: The Buccaneers, Eiye Confraternity, etc. They have been accused of violence, antisocial and antifemale attitudes, nihilism, hard drinking and of spreading like a virus around the world. Possibly, it was Soyinka the Pyrate chief who took over the radio station with a pistol.

[paolo laurent]

nga adolph, i dont know who you are trying to decive, or what country you mean by cameroon, but like SOYINKA, BB,EINSTEIN,
DUBOIS, P.JULIAN. INTELLECTUALS, all over the world never forget their citizenry, or
what country they come from, wether that country in free or under brutal occupation
as the case of southern cameroons and bate
besong. they all as myself a unique philosophy, which is, OUR PEOPLE LIFES ARE
FAR IMPORTANT TU US THAT OURS, and it our foremost duty to leave their life far better than hoe we meet them here on earth in our country, (SOUTHERN CAMEROONS AND NIGERIA RESPECTIVELLY).
CAMEROON, IS NOT A UNIFIED COUNTRY BUT
A FORCED -FALSE JIGSAW OF LA REPUBLIQUE DU CAMEROUN AND SOUTHREN CAMEROONS.EMMANCIPATED.

[paolo laurent]

nga adolph, i dont know who you are trying to decive, or what country you mean by cameroon, but like SOYINKA, BB,EINSTEIN,
DUBOIS, P.JULIAN. INTELLECTUALS, all over the world never forget their citizenry, or
what country they come from, wether that country in free or under brutal occupation
as the case of southern cameroons and bate
besong. they all as myself a unique philosophy, which is, OUR PEOPLE LIFES ARE
FAR IMPORTANT TU US THAT OURS, and it our foremost duty to leave their life far better than hoe we meet them here on earth in our country, (SOUTHERN CAMEROONS AND NIGERIA RESPECTIVELLY).
CAMEROON, IS NOT A UNIFIED COUNTRY BUT
A FORCED -FALSE JIGSAW OF LA REPUBLIQUE DU CAMEROUN AND SOUTHREN CAMEROONS.EMMANCIPATED.

[Nga Adolph]

Mr Laurent,
I was looking at the intellectual prowess of Wole Soyinka and how he has consistently and fearlessly stood against military dictators in Nigeria.Those are the qualities I wanted to portray.I was not into the Southern Cameroon's argument.I am a die hard believer in the Southern Cameroon's rising to statehood.Ofcourse,with the notable exception of people like Late Bate Besong,Southern Cameroon's is in dire need of intellectuals of the mettle of Wole Soyinka.I agree with you that we must put in all what it will take to achieve that goal.Aluta Continua.

Nga Adolph.
Leuven(Belgium).

[paolo laurent]

nga. precah what you believe, always differentiate, southern cameroons and CAMEROUN, NEXT when commenting please.

[Rogers Tabe Egbe Orock]

Dear Dibussi,
I cannot start off without encouraging you in this enlightening blogging efforts you make.

Now, I just have a few observations and additional reflections to make on the public role of the intellectual as seen by Soyinka, with special reference to Cameroon.

First, it is good that most Nigerian intellectuals understand that the intellectual is only valid in his connection to the people and place of his time. Indeed Claude Ake (1994)in his reflections on the erosion of academi freedom in Africa incisively pointed out that oft we take too much of a state-centrist appraoch, wherein we criticise the state for all the troubles within the university institution,ignoring the self-selling which African intellectuals wantonly subject themselves to. For Ake (ibid.) African intellectuals are guilty in considerable part, as a result of their overzealous concern with opportunism,careerism,parochialism,factionalism, and most crucially ideological intolerance. The result is a weakened capacity for intellectuals to collectively defend themselves against unavoidable state attempts to co-opt and assault them. And Abiola Irele (2003) an Africanists literary scholar had hoped that African universities could succeed to severe themselves from state clutches by becoming ivory towers and having less concern with activities concerning their states. In a chiding response John Murungi (2004) has warned that no one, least of all African intellectuals, should delude themselves that there could be a university that is not "fettered" from the state, since a university like all institutions is a product of the 'politics' of its time. For him (as for me),it is only by their courageous engagement,criticism and action as Soyinka does, that teachers and other scholars within African university systems can adequately engage the social process and social conscience of their society, making the university relevant to the wider society. The university,(like the media and recently the church) is the bulwark of the balance between state and society and anything short of this amounts to betrayal of their social responsibility. And the Cameroonian social and political philosopher Bernard Fonlon (1979:13) noted this social responsibility to be primarily that of exploring and disseminating 'all truths'.

Now turning the situation in our Cameoon academia,could one contemplate that there is any attempt to heed Fonlon's prescription? If not, what sort of academia has Cameroon universities been breeding, the type Ake castigates? Drawing on my observation from my former university (the University of Buea), where I was a student between 2002 and 2005 I will only highlight the trends that point to answers to these questions. The relevance of this reflection can only be fully grasped if we remember that Cameroon, like most sub-Saharan African countries, is presently rocked by what Richard Joseph(2003)has termed "catastrophic governance", wherein the society is preyed upon by those within the state bureaucratic agency.
Dibussi, I need not enumerate many cases which will point glaringly that contrary to the ideas circulated around on political liberalisation by the state and its sycophant, the present regime has no less resorted to the very "preventive strategies" that the old order employed(see Mbuago and Akoko, 2004).
In my days at the University of Buea, the very first psychological reflection that one has on entering the campus for the first time is of fear. Yes sheer fear. The geneal atmosphere was one to tell you without anyone telling you, that there were things you could talk about and things you could not, that there were people you could talk about and others you dare not mention. In short, the very prescription of Fonlon for a university was here sold at no price. To make things worse, the university was openly divided into two camps (I mean ideologically), between the many barons of the regime under the cloak of intellectuals and those two people considered as pariah: the most incisive and torrentious Bate Besong in the Faculty of Arts and the calm and pragmatic Johnny Fonyam of the Department of Law. These two in their own different ways were the only two who defied these gluttons in the administration and dared the regime in Etoudi.However, these two had different truths in focus, the former as a social and literary critique was crying for a marriage turned sour between the ever domineering French speaking majority and and the suppressed English speaking people of the erstwhile Southern Cameroon and other broad neo-patrimonial ills; the latter was bemoaning a social and political asphyxiatiation of teachers within Cameroonian uniiversities and the University of Buea in praticular, in his capacity as President of the National University Teachers Trade Union for the Buea chapter.
During period of intense political activities such as elections, all these university administrators abandoned offices for their village and regional bases (in reflection to Murungi's argument). But they enganged the political and social process merely in approval of all actions from the regime and went to any length to call any dissident to order, never making objective assessment of regime actions vis-a-vis the society.
Ask me about all the other lecturers in between these two camps? To answer you, here is a picture painted by a newspaper article about the university of Buea:
" The university of Buea simmers with disenchantment, albeit suppressed, for fear of reprisals.Lecturers, for example, are so gripped with fear that when The Post embarked on this investigative reports all those talked-to pleaded - sometimes lietrally begged for anonimity.
Against such a background of crippling fear, intellectual debate is stifled. In other
universities debate and dissent epitomise academia. At the University of Buea the impression is that the staff is emasculated.
Nobody dares openly raise a contrary view to that held by the establishment, because they are scared stiff of being expelled" (Wache, Atatah and Njofon, The Post, No. 0143, Monday October 25, 1999).

So Dibussi, in this context i propose that if the intellectual is first a citizen before anything, the majority of Camerooian teachers (I cannot find the force in me to use 'intellectual') are first subjects who have to negotiate their citizenship everyday in their various campuses (see Mamdani, 1996), as the latest example of the previous Vice-chancellor Cornelius Lambi showed when he had to deny the truth of an imposed list to blame the 'mistake on himself' but was nevertheless thanked with a sack. Citizenship(as Soyinka possesses) is not a given in Cameroon, it rests in the hands of some individuals rather than the sovereign will embodied by the constitution, and it could either be forcefully taken as Bate and Fonyam do, be begged for and be given partially as most lecturers do on a daily basis in Cameroon or totally absent as the case is for many. I think that Nyamnjoh's (2007) recent insight on 'flexible citizenship' could be the best perspective to grasp these intricacies. Yet, most crucially we must understand that in the main our universities do not have citizens but subjects, consequently they cannot practice intellectualism 'by action' as Soyinka does.

Rogers Tabe Egbe Orock
Department of Sociology and Anthropology,
University of Helsinki

[Agborballa Nkongho]

Dibussi,
Kindly please send me your telephone number.
I am currently in Sierra Leone and will like to get in contact with you.

Rgds
Agbor Balla
Legal Advisor
Special Court for Sierra Leone
TeL: +232-33-80-30-85

[Daniel Pennant]

I agree with you that "Wole Soyinka - The Writer as a Citizen", but i like his books and most people on EbonyFriends.com mentioned that they like Wole Soyinka's books.

[George Oti]

Soyinka is playing out his destiny informed by his nature and nuture.However,he is lucky to be alive today as we can see from his boigraphy.The Cameroon intellectuals understand they may not have thesame kind of god as sonyinka.Even if they do,they would not afford the libation.Perhaps the comportment of the cameroon intellectuals reference classical example of selfishness and high sense of acquisitiveness.They do not care to write their names in the concrete walls of time but on their finite individual proceations;its also here that Soyinka differs.