Wole Soyinka @90: Reviewing ‘The Penkelemes Years’ at CORA’s ‘Kongi90 Season’

* ‘One of the ways we allow our language to die is by not using it’

By Godwin Okondo

AS part of month-long ctivities to honour Wole Soyinka at his 90th birthday, the Committee for Relevant Arts (CORA) hosted “The Kongi90 Season” on Saturday, July 20, 2024 at CORA Library & Resource Centre, Freedom Park, Lagos Island. It featured exhibitions, discussions, and reading from Soyinka’s book, Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years. CORA Secretary, Mr. Toyin Akinosho; CORA board Chairman, Chief. Kayode Aderinokun and creative entrepreneur and curator, Ugoma Ebila were present, with journalist and writer, Fadairo Kunle Abayomi anchoring the event.

The exhibits featured some of Soyinka’s photographs taken during his youthful days, with Mr. Akinosho, saying, “Rueading Soyinka’s books, you’ll learn that he loved the nightlight a lot. From the pictures of him in his younger years, you can tell that he could become a rebel one day. I think the very first Black African Nobel laureate must have been in his 50s, and there were not up to 100 people who had won it, and it’s a very distinguished prize and considered the most important prize in Literature on the planet, and there’s no other prize for literature more revered than the Nobel. He was the first African to win it, and after he won, there hasn’t been what you might call ‘actual Africans,’ and he won it close to 40 years ago.

“There are also other Africans who have won it, and some of them are white, and this gives you a sense that Africa is not just dominated by black people. There are actually about seven million people who are white and call themselves Africans. We have white people in South Africa, who have been there for years, and also the Arabs in Egypt, and they don’t look like us, but they are Africans.

“Considering the population of Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, etc, then you’d say there are millions of Arab-Africans. When you say Africa, it’s not just black people. In places like Kenya, there are pockets of white people no less than 500,000. From all this geography, this was the first man who ever won it, at the age of 52. Other people who have won it did so in their 60s.”

Akinosho went on to say that Soyinka was very active in the civil life of Nigeria as he tried to help construct a Nigeria that we could all be proud of. He traced his involvement in the Nigeria Civil War and his relationship with the breakaway Biafran warlord and the ugly aftermath of that historic intervention.

“He intervened in the Nigeria Civil War, and pleaded with both sides,” Akinosho said. “He had to travel to Enugu, as a Yoruba man, to speak with the factions. You could be executed at anytime during the military era, for speaking your mind, and that was one of the things he stood against. I’m not sure things are better now than it was then, but at least, you can speak your mind now. He was always in things such as protests where tear gas was being thrown, and you could just tell that it was in his blood. He wants to speak truth to power.”

“(When the Biafran warlord Chukwemeka Odumegwu) Ojukwu came back to the country in 1981 or 82, essentially 11 years after the war had ended, and the two old friends met. Around this period too, there will be a bunch of pro-Soyinka writers like (Dr. Yemi) Ogunbiyi, (Prof. Niyi) Osundare, (Prof. Femi) Osofisan, who were always dressed in adire like Soyinka.”

He said Kongi’s Harvest was a film by Soyinka released in 1960, and another feature film, Blues for the Prodigal, and other documentaries. Kongi’s Harvest is about a clash between the military ruler and a traditional Oba, about what to do with a particular cultural festival, whether it is the traditional ruler himself who would sanctify the festival.

“It refers to what we learned from the British,” Akinosho continued. “You hand over power to the people who are supposedly elected, but the society that the British met before they started ruling us was a traditional society where the ‘oba’, or whatever title he held, was the leader, and by the time the British left, the society had transformed to a state that nobody truly understood, and I think part of the developmental challenges we are having is that definition of who we really are, and a lot of Soyinka’s plays explores those kinds of things. If you look at Death and the King’s Horsemen, that’s the same kind of question: ‘who are these people?’”

Wole Soyinka

Akinosho dwelt on Soyinka’s aversion to the two foreign religions that tend to dominate the lives of Africans, and which have also equally messed up their cultural identity to the unforgivable point of self-denial and alienation.

“He was always complaining about this thing these religions do, and he was always against it — it was the extreme form of religions, and he was always presenting, not necessarily the Yoruba religion, but in his own view, is more liberal and accepting of other people. You can choose to argue with Ogun. He is always lamenting and lashing out against those extremes that take people’s lives because someone mentions a particular thing. He is liberal about religion, but he is not an atheist. He believes in something.”

Excerpts from Soyinka’s Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years was read and discussed by Adesokan Ridwan and Olasokan Oyindamola, which was followed by a discussion on its theme by Adesokan Sodiq and Odetunde Lateef.

According to Sodiq, “From the excerpt, we have two people talking about a particular thing. There’s a man who wants the other to learn how to speak French, and he equates that to being civilized. Looking at the conversation between both of them, there are so many things we can actually deduce. Although, it is probably a novel, but then in a novel, dramatic dialogue is allowed.

“There is one thing that is prominent in that discussion — one person believes that learning French is a way to show that one is civilized, and well cultured. That’s like speaking a foreign language above your own language. To the blessed memory of Prof. Sophia Oluwole, I think the first female philosopher in Nigeria, who said she wishes that even in our schools, our own indigenous languages should be used as a means of instruction.

“But then what we have these days is the foreign language, and anybody who isn’t speaking English isn’t speaking at all. So, from the excerpt we can actually see that Soyinka believes that his own mother tongue is the best, and there is nothing that can be compared to it, and he doesn’t want to go through the stress of learning how to speak French to be considered civilized.

“In this excerpt, we can see that sometimes, when we find ourselves in foreign lands, we sometimes take on their culture and leave ours behind. The two speakers are actually from Africa, and one is from Cameroon, though he didn’t actually mention where he comes from, but from the conversation, we can deduce that this other person is from Nigeria, because he mentions Yoruba, and I would deduce that this is Wole Soyinka himself. As we all know, even a writer will have a part of their life revealed in their work, and for me, when that person who claims to be Yoruba is actually speaking, we can see the ideology of our wonderful professor.”

For Lateef, “When we look at this excerpt, we see that the character, from the countenance, is Soyinka. There’s a place where he says the French man collects a coin from him and still wants to keep the change. From there, we see enforcement of culture and language. The second speaker says that learning French is like learning their culture, and that takes us to the realm of colonialism.

“Those people that were colonized by the French, more or less, behave like the French, unlike the British. They imitate them, and everything about the French is about their colonies, unlike the British. The second speaker who experiences colonialism from the British tends to disagree with the fact that he must learn French because he’s going to France when he’s only going to be spending a week or two there.

“That tells us so much more about the man we are dealing with, who always stands his ground in anything. He starts to curse the French man in Yoruba language, starting with him, and then his unborn kids, because of one coin. That’s another issue that we must look at — standing for something. He stood for the fact that the whole culture of tipping is rubbish, to the extent that he won an oratory competition speaking against this thing. When you’re given a microphone to speak about something you are pained about, you would be eloquent and passionate about it.”

Lateef also spoke about identity, as encapsulated in the book, saying, “One of the ways we identify ourselves is by our language. One of the ways we allow our language to die is by not using it. If you look at the way Yoruba is being modified today, it’s approaching extinction already, and we hope it doesn’t happen, because it’s changing generally.

“I’m from Osun state, and when I go home, I see kids seven to eight years’ old speaking Yoruba, and when I listen, I feel like I speak rubbish, but when they come here, we tend to see them as local. We are the local ones, and they are the natives. We should make sure we try as much as possible to keep our languages alive, because that is our identity.”

On bilingualism as a necessity for survival as the world advances, Lateef said, “Another thing you need to note in the text is that the speaker says he’s only staying for a month, so he would learn the few phrases he needs to survive. So, you have your native language, and you can also learn another language.

“We have compound and coordinate bilingualism, and there are people that can speak like it’s their native language. There’s also another situation where you can speak your own native language, and another language you have little knowledge about. The text doesn’t give the idea that we shouldn’t be open; it’s the fact that while you want to be open to new things, keep yours well.”

Commenting on the assimilation of languages and the act of tipping likened to bribery, or not liking beng cheated, Lateef said, “tipping in that text is used metaphorically to mean bribery. Tipping can have two meanings. First, it can stand for bribery or trying to commend the effort of someone. For instance, after buying something, you can ask the seller to keep the change, which can be seen as tipping. Metaphorically, it can still be seen as bribery — to tip a person to get a particular piece of information or something. I believe Soyinka himself stands against bribery and tipping, as seen in the text. Tipping can also be used to show the economic status of a person.”

“Concerning assimilation, the issue is that of culture, and what the second speaker is saying is that for you to survive in the land of the French, you must learn how to speak the language, because it will help you understand the culture, Said Ridwan. “One of the cultures mentioned is that of tipping. He went to buy milk and his change wasn’t given to him, and he had to ask for it. When we talk about assimilation, we are talking about colonization in the sense that the French colonies are forced to behave exactly like the French.”

Ridwan stated the distinction between the policy relationship between the British and the French and their colonial charges as portrayed in the outlook of both Francophone and Anglophone African countries: “The policy of assimilation (pursued by the French) is that you must practice the culture and dress the same way, and behave just like them (French). The British colonial rule wasn’t like that, and people were allowed to practice their culture. If you have read Death and the King’s Horseman, the white woman was playing with the egungun and encouraging them; that was more of association, not assimilation. For assimilation, you need to do everything the French does!”