Wole Soyinka @90: Emi Ogun… An enduring legacy
By Niyi Osundare
IS it really possible for the rose to change its smell when it changes its name? And why are names so important? The name given to a child is, more or less, taken as a kind of introduction to the kind of life that child is going to bear. What is the kinship to this voice, and the voices of other thinkers, other doers, other troublemakers who stride across borders, decades at war with the regimen of positive interventionists who intrude upon our universe at the right time and for the right reason? And there are many of them.
The young ones among us, you know, the free South Africa we know today was not so free a couple of years ago. It took so, so much, and the efforts of so many people to set it free. One of the weapons was literature. Nedim Fuad, the popular poet of Egypt was a thorn in the flesh of tyrants. Pablo Neruda, poet of Chile, who got oppressed humanity to find its voice. I still remember him saying, “I made an unbreakable pledge to myself that the people would find their voice among song.” That was an audacious thing to say at the time he said it, that he said it, he acted it, and behold, it came true. Gabrielle Garcia Marquez whose magical realism toppled the trapeze of dehumanizing reality.
The validation that we got is everywhere present in the works of people like my friend, Femi Osofisan, and very large extent, Olu Obafemi, today. I walked through the chartered streets where the chartered tapes flow and mark in every face, and see marks of wisdom, marks of war. These were right as in the 18th century who saw their country the way it was, and especially what was kept on being said, ‘Oh England, you are losing your credibility in the world. You are losing your great tradition because you have allowed decay to come in!’
I’m mentioning this because when you see England, I don’t think there is any giant that never suckled at his or her mother’s breast. The power of the voice. This is what we’re talking about. These were people who use their voices the way Soyinka has been using his own voice. Like our own Soyinka, whose weight and wonder we gathered here to celebrate, rugged reasoner, intellectual pundit, fierce satirist and rri-cracking humans. This long distance runner has looked over the years. They have bloomed our traps with the best of cogent argumentation and pungent counterpoints.
Prof. Niyi Osundare
Yes, this is Mohammed Ali in the hopeless arena that is Nigeria. The only difference is that his blows come many times from hands without gloves. Before us here are some of the products of our ani ma dake, that ceaseless interventionist, and I’m going to use just a couple of examples. The issue of restructuring, which is spoken of everywhere you go. We’ve used the word restructure so many times that it seemed to have lost its potent. Soyinka joined the fray, but as usual, from a radical and really deep anger. So what are we restructuring in the Nigerian politics?
In his book series titled Interventions, Soyinka wrote, “again and again, we are called upon to justify the need for a national conference. Again and again, we do so in the media, on public platforms, even incidental discussions. Again and again, come to the question, what do you mean when you say the nation must be restructured? The timing of this meeting carries with it a bitter poignancy for many of us, for whom the place of memory remains an internal burden. That is also the duty.”
There’s also Nigeria’s incurable dependency syndrome, which he looks at in Interventions 2’, where he said, ”We have the choice to create our own cultural identities that motivate productivity and lead to self-reliance or await the handouts from the charity of the world. We must remember, however, that there is a condiment that must be swallowed with the food of charity, a chastening ingredient that is known as crying.” When I read this the first time, a second time, I looked around and realised virtually everything around me was manufactured abroad.
Virtually everything we use and people say we are independent. They even say we are post-colonial. These are lies. And where is independence you’re talking about? And the world is the post in your post-coloniality? The state of the Naira today is telling us the lies they’ve been telling us about the economy for so long. We’ve become an unproductive and childishly dependent country. We live on a river and look at the way we die of thirst. How can such country expect, uh, expect, respect from the rest of the world? How can such a country avoid being hungry?
Soyinka has been waging this war against the misuse of the internet, and he himself is a victim of this misuse. I cannot help agreeing with them because I’m so afraid of. The Yoruba people say, “when something is too sweet, watch out. It must have a hidden bitter side”. The internet is so wonderful. You can send a message within a minute with just the push of a button. The speed at which truth travels is also the speed at which destructive untruth travels. So, in some of the ‘Interventions’ Soyinka is at war with the misuse of the internet. Most recent of the interventions, this one is really talking about that too and what happens when the voice is misused. He also talks in one of the books, of Trump and the politics of the destruction of his Green Card. He also talked about Boko Haram and terrorism in Interventions 3.
Interventions series is a binding belief in the power of memory, arising from the faculty and practice of record keeping, his ability to talk straight, because he remembers straight, and he thinks straight. Our author is a fierce, unrepentant believer in the power of the written word, as shaper of memory and tutor of remembrance. I cannot think of a more eloquent preacher of the power of memory and talk back doer that usually happens in what he calls the repository of liars. Some critics say his verbal intervention is so frequent, so stranded, it leaves a sour taste in the throat. Some are there that are not frequent enough, and it is an undisputable fact that what we have here is the voice that is subverse to indifference and antithetical to silence, a voice with a profound grip on our national discourse.
A voice of an author with an unvarnished resolve. The Interventions series are basically for record keeping. A voice frequently capable of foretelling the past by recording the future, a voice that gets tyrants shaking in their brutish boots, a voice that fortifies human dignity with human freedom beyond and above muffled machinations and protocols of smallness. A voice which said to a nation just emerging from a wasteful, unnecessary war, “to keep Nigeria one, justice must be done.” Before then, it was, “to keep Nigeria one is a task that must be done.” That was the first thing he said when he burst out of incarceration. We talk about this voice and the way it creates and recreates counterpoints, and for a long time, his own version took control of the air.
A voice that led a-one mass court to a radio station to frustrate the message of a tyrant rule, a voice which summoned the nationals to keep death off our lives. A voice which follows the truth no matter how difficult. A voice which has mastered the bond between wine and wisdom. A voice of conscience, whether personal or public, whether political or psychologically. Wole Soyinka’s voice is a voice that is never afraid. The voice, oh, that voice!
* Osundare is a Distinguished Professor English at the University of New Orleans, US
