Happy Birthday to Wole Soyinka

Akinwande Oluwole "Wole" Soyinka

The light of Nigeria; the epitome of brilliance and greatness; the man of uncommon intelligence; Professor Emeritus Wole Soyinka is 80 today. I would like to use this medium of my own to wish this great man a very happy birthday. He has done a lot for his generation and the youths. Apart from the fact that he is a literature guru, he is an active and non-partisan critic of the government. He is such a role model for every intellectual youth. Can words be enough to describe this great man? I guess not.

In the words of Bayo Oluwasanmi in his recently published article titled "Wole Soyinka: Our Lion and Our Jewel", he said: "Wole Soyinka is unlike most Nigerians of his generation who see self-promotion and self-preservation as their goals in life but failed to discover the liberating power of expendability. Wole Soyinka see his time, talents, and treasures as weapons for the liberation of oppressed Nigerians."

Excerpts from Wikipedia: He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its struggle for independence from Great Britain. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967 during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years. Soyinka has strongly criticised many Nigerian military dictators, especially late General Sanni Abacha, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. 

Much of his writing has been concerned with "the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it". During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria via the "Nadeco Route" on a motorcycle. Living abroad, mainly in the United States, he was a professor first at Cornell University and then at Emory University in Atlanta, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Abacha proclaimed a death sentence against him "in absentia". 

Soyinka was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, becoming the first African laureate. He was described as one "who in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence". Reed Way Dasenbrock writes that the award of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Soyinka is "likely to prove quite controversial and thoroughly deserved." He also notes that "it is the first Nobel Prize awarded to an African writer or to any writer from the 'new literatures' in English that have emerged in the former colonies of the British Empire." His Nobel acceptance speech, "This Past Must Address Its Present", was devoted to South African freedom-fighter Nelson Mandela. Soyinka's speech was an outspoken criticism of apartheid and the politics of racial segregation imposed on the majority by the Nationalist South African government. In 1986, he received the Agip Prize for Literature. 

We are really blessed to have Wole Soyinka amidst us. Bro Kongi, Nigeria loves you; you are a priceless jewel to us and we will continue to honour your presence amidst us.

Happy Birthday once again, sir.