Wole Soyinka Special

An In-depth expository of the Living Legend

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Professor 'Wole Soyinka

• Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka  popularly known as ‘Wole Soyinka’ was born into a Yoruba family, the second of six children, descendant of a Remo family of Isara-Remo in the city of Abeokuta, Ogun State in Nigeria, on the 13th of July, 1934.
• He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature the first African to be honoured in that category. His Nobel acceptance speech, "This Past Must Address Its Present", was devoted to South African freedom-fighter Nelson Mandela
• Soyinka's mother, Grace Eniola Soyinka (whom he dubbed the "Wild Christian"), owned a shop in the nearby market. She was a political activist within the women's movement in the local community. She was also an Anglican
• He was raised in a religious family, attending church services and singing in the choir from an early age; however Soyinka himself became an atheist later in life.
• His father's position enabled him to get electricity and radio at home.
• After his study in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio.
• 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 Nigeria civil war, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years.
• Still, Soyinka never stopped criticizing Nigerian governments, especially the country's many military dictators, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe's regime in Zimbabwe
• During the regime of General Sani Abacha, Soyinka escaped from Nigeria via the "NADECO Route" on a motorcycle. Living abroad, mainly in the United States, Abacha proclaimed a death sentence against him "in absentia". With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation
• He was a professor first at Cornell University, then at Emory, Oxford, Harvard and Yale, M University, where in 1996 he was appointed Professor Robert W. Woodruff  of the Arts.
• His mother was one of the most prominent members of the influential Ransome-Kuti family: she was the daughter of Rev. Canon J. J. Ransome-Kuti, and sister to Olusegun Azariah Ransome-Kuti, Oludotun Ransome-Kuti and sister in-law to Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti.
• Among Soyinka's cousins were the musician FelaKuti, the human rights activist Beko Ransome-Kuti, politician Olikoye Ransome-Kuti and activist Yemisi Ransome-Kuti
• After attending St. Peters Primary School in Abeokuta in 1940, Soyinka went to Abẹokuta Grammar School, where he won several prizes for literary composition. In 1946 he was accepted by Government College in Ibadan, at that time one of Nigeria’s elite secondary schools.
• He began studies at University College in Ibadan (1952–54), affiliated with the University of London. He studied English literature, Greek, and Western history where He graduated with Second Class Upper and not Third Class as widely believed
• While at university, Soyinka and six others founded the Pirates Confraternity, an anti-corruption and justice-seeking student organization, the first confraternity in Nigeria
• Later in 1954, Soyinka relocated to England, where he continued his studies in English literature. Soyinka began publishing and worked as an editor for the satirical magazine The Eagle. He wrote a column on academic life, often criticizing his university peers 
• Soyinka wrote the first full-length play produced on Nigerian television. Entitled My Father’s Burden and directed by Segun Olusola, the play was featured on the
• Western Nigeria Television (WNTV) on 6 August 1960.
• Soyinka published works satirizing the "Emergency" in the Western Region of Nigeria, as his Yorùbá homeland was increasingly occupied and controlled by the federal government. The political tensions arising from recent post-colonial independence eventually led to a military coup and civil war (1967–70)
• He produced his new satire, The Trials of Brother Jero. His work A Dance of The Forest (1960), a biting criticism of Nigeria's political elites, won a contest that year as the official play for Nigerian Independence Day. On 1 October 1960, it premiered in Lagos as Nigeria celebrated its sovereignty.
• In December 1964, together with scientists and men of theatre, Soyinka founded the Drama Association of Nigeria, being a lecturer at Obafemi Awolowo University, then University of Ife
• In the same 1964, he resigned his university post, as He started protesting against the government. A few months later, he was arrested for the first time, accused of underlying tapes during reproduction of recorded speech of the winner of Nigerian elections. He was released after a few months of confinement, as a result of protests by the international community of writers. This same year he wrote two more dramatic pieces: Before the Blackout and the comedy Kongi’s Harvest. He also wrote The Detainee, a radio play for the BBC in London. His play The Road premiered in London at the Commonwealth Arts Festival, opening on 14 September 1965 at the Theatre Royal.^[19] At the end of the year, he was promoted to headmaster and senior lecturer in the Department of English Language at University of Lagos
• Soyinka became more politically active. Following the military coup of January 1966, he secretly and unofficially met with the military governor Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu in the South-eastern town of Enugu (August 1967), to try to avert civil war. As a result, he had to go into hiding.
• He was imprisoned for 22 months as civil war ensued between the federal government and the Biafra’s. Though refused materials such as books, pens, and paper, he still wrote a significant body of poems and notes criticizing the Nigerian government
• Despite his imprisonment, Soyinka never stopped working. In September 1967, his play The Lion and The Jewel was produced in Accra. In November The Trials of Brother Jero and The Strong Breed were produced in the Greenwich Mews Theatre in New York. He also published a collection of his poetry, Idanre and Other Poems. It was inspired by Soyinka’s visit to the sanctuary of the Yorùbá deity Ogun, whom he regards as his "companion" deity, kindred spirit, and protector.
• While still imprisoned, Soyinka translated from Yoruba a fantastical novel by his compatriot D. O. Fagunwa, entitled The Forest of a Thousand Demons: A Hunter's Saga.
• In October 1969, when the civil war came to an end, amnesty was proclaimed, and Soyinka and other political prisoners were freed. For the first few months after his release, Soyinka stayed at a friend’s farm in southern France, where he sought solitude. He wrote The Bacchae of Euripides (1969), a reworking of the Pentheus myth.^[22] He soon published in London a book of poetry, Poems from Prison. At the end of the year, he returned to his office as Headmaster of Cathedral of Drama in Ibadan, and cooperated in the founding of the literary periodical Black Orpheus
• In 1970 he produced the play Kongi’s Harvest, while simultaneously adapting it as a film of the same title. Together with the group of 15 actors of Ibadan University Theatre Art Company, he went on a trip to the United States, to the Eugene O'Neill Memorial Theatre Centre in Waterford, Connecticut, where his latest play premiered. It gave them all experience with theatrical production in another English-speaking country.
• In 1971, his poetry collection A Shuttle in the Crypt was published. Madmen and Specialists was produced in Ibadan that year. Soyinka travelled to Paris to take the lead role as Patrice Lumumba, the murdered first Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo, in the production of his Murderous Angels. His powerful autobiographical work The Man Died (1971), a collection of notes from prison, was also published
• From 1975 to 1999, he was a Professor of Comparative Literature at the ObafemiAwolowo University, then called the University of Ife. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, he was made professor emeritus.^[3] Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In the fall of 2007 he was appointed Professor in Residence at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, US.
• In April 1971, concerned about the political situation in Nigeria, Soyinka resigned from his duties at the University in Ibadan, and began years of voluntary exile. In July in Paris, excerpts from his well-known play The Dance of The Forests were performed.
• He was noticed at the international scene that He keeps winning award and honours
• In 1975 Soyinka was promoted to the position of editor for Transition, a magazine based in the Ghanaian capital of Accra, where he moved for some time. He used his columns in Transition to criticise the "negrophiles and military regimes. He protested against the military junta of Idi Amin in Uganda. After the political turnover in Nigeria and the subversion of Gowon's military regime in 1975, Soyinka returned to his homeland and resumed his position at the Cathedral of Comparative Literature at the University of Ife.
• In 1981 Soyinka published his autobiographical work Aké: The Years of Childhood, which won a 1983 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.
• During the years 1975–84, Soyinka was also more politically active. At the University of Ife, his administrative duties included the security of public roads. He criticized the corruption in the government of the democratically elected President Shehu Shagari. When he was replaced by the general Muhammadu Buhari, Soyinka was often at odds with the military.
• In July 1983, one of Soyinka's musical projects, the Unlimited Liability Company, issued a long-playing record entitled I Love My Country, on which several prominent Nigerian musicians played songs composed by Soyinka
• In 1984, a Nigerian court banned his 1971 book The Man Died.
• In 1993 Soyinka was awarded an honorary doctorate from Harvard University.
• The next year another part of his autobiography appeared: Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years (A Memoir: 1946–1965). The following year his play The Beatification of Area Boy was published. In October 1994, he was appointed UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for the Promotion of African culture, human rights, freedom of expression, media and communication.
• The Wole Soyinka Lecture Annual Lecture Series was founded in 1994 and "is dedicated to honouring one of Nigeria and Africa’s most outstanding and enduring literary icons: Professor Wole Soyinka" It is organized by the National Association of Seadogs (Pyrates Confraternity). Wole Soyinka with six other students founded the organization in 1952 at the then University College Ibadan

In November 1994, Soyinka fled from Nigeria through the border with Benin and then to the United States. In 1996 his book The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis was first published.

In 1997 he was charged with treason by the government of General Sani Abacha. The International Parliament of Writers (IPW) was established in 1993 to provide support for writers victimized by persecution. Soyinka became the organization's second president from 1997 to 2000.
• In 1999, a BBC-commissioned play called "Document of Identity" aired on BBC Radio 3, telling the lightly-fictionalized story of the problems his daughter's family encountered during a stopover in Britain when they fled Nigeria for the US in 1997; her baby was born prematurely in London and became a stateless person
• In April 2007 Soyinka called for the cancellation of the Nigerian presidential elections held two weeks earlier, beset by widespread fraud and violence. In the wake of the Christmas Day (2009) bombing attempt on a flight to the US by a Nigerian student who had become radicalized in Britain, Soyinka questioned the United Kingdom's social logic that allows every religion to openly proselytize their faith, asserting that it is being abused by religious fundamentalists thereby turning England into a cesspit for the breeding of extremism. He supported the freedom of worship but warned against the consequence of the illogic of allowing religions to preach apocalyptic violence.
• In 2011, the African Heritage Research Library and Cultural Centre built a writers' enclave in his honour. It is located in Adeyipo Village, Lagelu Local Government Area, Ibadan, Oyo State, Nigeria. The enclave includes a Writer-in-Residence Programme that enables writers to stay for a period of two, three or six months, engaging in serious creative writing.
• In August 2014, Soyinka delivered a recorded of his speech "From Chibok with Love" to the World Humanist Congress in Oxford, hosted by the International Humanist and Ethical Union and the British Humanist Association. The Congress theme was Freedom of thought and expression: Forging a 21st Century Enlightenment. He was awarded the 2014 International Humanist Award 
• Soyinka has been married three times and divorced twice. He has children from his three marriages. His first marriage was in 1958 to the late British writer, Barbara Dixon, whom he met at the University of Leeds in the 1950s. Barbara was the mother of his first son, Olaokun. His second marriage was in 1963 to Nigerian librarian OlaideIdowu, with whom he had three daughters, Moremi, Iyetade (deceased), Peyibomi, and a second son, Ilemakin. Soyinka married Folake Doherty in 1989.
• In 2014, he revealed his battle with prostate cancer
• Soyinka recently published ‘weapon of mass destruction’ where he categorically criticised the unorganised attitude of the media at the recent events He graced
• Today, Soyinka has inspired thousands of youths all over the world to write and to speak out on what they feel is not right.