The road looks lonely, an untarred road that snakes through thick bushes. This road, that is often quiet whose tranquility is being disrupted today, leads to Forest Lodge, Wole Soyinka’s country home in Abeokuta.
It is a road less travelled by those who do not know how to get around but one that is familiar to Soyinka who tells me it has been his hunting ground for some years. On a certain birthday, Soyinka recalls when the interview began, he just wanted to be by himself, to think, to reflect on life and the very many troubles that come with it.
“It happened by accident that on a certain birthday,” he recalls, “I just felt the way I wanted to spend the birthday was by myself; just by myself. Not seeing any human being, just disappearing completely. That’s how it started. And so, I disappeared someway. Sometimes I go to commune with my friends, the beasts whom I chased out of here. You know, I hunted them too much so I have to go further afield to find them where they are. All these (the forest around his house) used to be my hunting ground before civilisation, as I said, came here.”
And so, on his 80th birthday, Soyinka embarked on game hunting. He took his gun to partially hunt and also partially take a walk to reflect again on myriads of issues. Top on his kind was the issue of the kidnapped Chibok girls. Later in the evening, he shared some of his thoughts. “I took my gun for a walk as I said and generally I just thought about things,” Soyinka recalls his experience during the hunting expedition. “And since you ask that question, I will reveal to you something. That out of that process of thinking about the many things we have spoken about today, I decided that maybe we need an organisation which we can call ‘Volunteers for Chibok’ or ‘Chibok Volunteers’ to intervene, to the limits of their capacity because fighting evil is not as you know, a matter of just guns, bullets and RPGs and AK47s and so on.”
Soyinka believes another step to take to solve the problem of militancy in the country is to win back the minds that have gone insane. “No, it goes beyond that. We have to win back sane minds. It’s important that we address the re-educational template of many of these foot soldiers who are wreaking havoc all over the nation. And maybe we need an organisation, beginning here which might become international in scope, in dimension and dedicated to the re-tuning of these minds. Yes, we are aware of the problems of marginalisation, great alienation, poverty, injustice which makes recruitment so easy, especially among those who’ve been brain washed from childhood. And I think a multi-dimensional approach, propaganda, if you like, is essential. The military aspect special trained elements who will destroy those who can no longer be re-educated.”
For Soyinka, the gathering of students from different parts of the country for his birthday is a pointer to the fact that nobody can mess around with the education of the young minds. “I am most delighted; very delighted that some of you have come from the troubled parts of the nation. It’s for me a message; not only for me but for the entire world that despite all the difficulties, no one should mess around with your educational opportunities.
“For me that’s the most crucial question of our times that we still on this globe, this nation, Nigeria that we have people who are dedicated to truncating the process of enlightenment of humanity in general and of children in particular. I’m not going to go into the details, you know what’s happening. You know the tremendous losses that our youthful generation has taken, and is still taking. You know all about our missing pupils, your colleagues. But I want you to know also that some of us are determined that, we will not allow them to vanish into limbo. No matter how little is our potential, we intend to maximise that potential to ensure that sooner rather than later, you are embraced by your missing colleagues. Your siblings in the education family.”
Soyinka has been known the world over to speak for his people through his writings. He has not only spoken for his people through his works but also through his actions. In particular he will be remembered and celebrated for the steps he took in 1965 when he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. The aftermath of this was his arrest in 1967 during the Nigerian Civil War by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years. This incarceration birthed his memoir The Man Died: Prison Notes (1971). While in prison for 22 months as civil war ensued between the Federal Government and the Biafrans, he used refused materials such as books, pens, and paper to write a large body of poems and notes criticising the Nigerian government.
He is a man who has a mastery of his mother tongue, the Yoruba language although not many people have heard him speak it publicly.
The professor’s love for tranquility has made him find a hiding place in a forest in Idi Aba Housing estate, Abeokuta. “In fact, the jungle has caught up with civilization or rather the other way round; civilization has caught up with the jungle. As you came through the gates into this Idi Aba Housing Estate, between here and that spot, there were just two other buildings and one of them was uninhabited. So, in fact, we’ve met finally. But to answer your question succinctly, I just like tranquillity. I lead a very active existence so I need somewhere I can retreat to without the landlord coming for rent. And any animal that tries to argue with me about my rights to this place, I have an answer for.”
You speak so confidently that Nigeria will rise again but we see that it is deteriorating every day. What gives you the confidence that the country will rise again?
As a lover of humanity, Soyinka never stops being optimistic for a better Nigeria and he feels he is born to be an advocate of the people. “One does what one feels one is born to do,” he says. “You don’t question the urge. Sometimes creativity is a form of arrogance. You feel you have something which is useful for other people. That requires a level of arrogance. And more basically, you feel you are bursting with something or the other. And you express that, maybe in music, not just in writing; maybe in painting, sculpting. Maybe even in architecture. I expressed myself for instance, in the design of this house but I didn’t carry the arrogance as far as to attempt to build it myself. I made sure I had a structural engineer who put the design into formal means and then we built it together and I enjoyed every moment of it.
“I don’t consider myself a nationalist; the word patriot I find very suspect though it’s important. What I do believe in is humanity. I believe in humanity the humanity into which I was born. So it’s not a question of whether I believe in it or not. I believe in the human community and you all form a critical part of that human community. And I believe also that issues like justice, fair play and equally opportunity, they belong fundamentally as a right of every human being. But basically in spirit I just believe in humanity. And this one encased in the national borders called or miscalled Nigeria happens to be the humanity to which I was allotted by my parents. So the humanity within that nation space is what I passionately believe in.”
Often the writer has always been asked about his believe in the existence of God. Trust him, he has an answer. “That’s a very large question and I’m glad when youths ask that question,” he says. “It’s a very important one since it’s the cause of so much anguish, commotion in the world, especially right now. At the same time however, belief in the existence of such an entity has been the source of inspiration to so many people. Not just creative inspiration but ethical inspiration. That means that sometimes, very often in fact, belief in a god compels people to act in a way which is based on fear of future judgment. So I answer this question very carefully because I don’t want people to stop believing in anything that may help in the formulation of their existence.
“If you want to believe in ghosts, please go ahead and do so but don’t take a machete to my neck because I say I don’t believe in ghosts. So if you believe in a supernatural entity, go right ahead. All I know is that it is to the credit of humanity that it is capable of conceiving of something which cannot be scientifically proven. And I don’t think there is anything bad in that. It has resulted in beautiful architecture, cathedrals, mosques, synagogues, shrines, just the need to express something outside yourself which is manifested by the works of your hand. This for me shows that humanity can transcend itself. And so finally to the question do I believe in God as represented by Christians? The answer is no. Do I believe in religion as represented by Muslims? The answer is no. By Jews, by Zoroastrians, by Buddhists etc? No, I do not believe God under that kind of definition. I believe however that humanity is a spiritual being and it enhances the quality of mortality to believe that there is something outside of yourself. Whether you call it an essence, a sensation, an intuition or whatever that you are able to think and conceive in terms which are extra material, I think that’s useful for humanity. But please, don’t say that I cannot indulge in my own set of beliefs, that’s what creates problem; or my set of non beliefs also, equally important. It’s this that creates disharmony within the community.”