One can move slowly and even unconsciously upward through these various levels I have described. But I would argue that one should be conscious of the movement, and especially the increasing degree of responsibilities. In particular, Level III should be entered with caution and respect. Here, there is the greatest responsibility. The public intellectual is often speaking about things beyond his or her area of expertise. Some people will refuse such an invitation; others will accept the responsibility that has been given them. Einstein, an inward and essentially shy person, but at the same time a man of great self confidence and awareness of his stature, and accepted the responsibility of the Level III public intellectual. Such a person must be careful, he must be aware of the limitations of his knowledge, he must acknowledge his personal prejudices because he is being asked to speak for a whole realm of thought, he must be aware of the huge possible consequences of what he says and writes and does.
A Man, an Idea, and Our Own
If the public intellectual is thus marked out by “intelligence and engagement, and the fact that they speak out”, then surely those who describe Kongi as one merely acknowledge the obvious. Through his life and works, Kongi shows calm comfort with both the intrinsic role of the public intellectual and the agency that comes with it.
But Kongi is not any mere public intellectual; he is a fully paid-up member of that rarefied world of the Level III public intellectual. Therefore, those who describe him as one of “Africa’s premier public intellectuals” do not do his stature or contributions justice. By definition, the Level III public intellectual defies geography or specialty. His geography is the universe and his specialty is polymath.
Yet, we in this part of the world feel called upon to lay special claims to Kongi because this is where it all began and this is where he has also made his most substantial case and claims upon our consciousness and imagination. I would venture that we treasure Kongi not merely because we’re entranced by the artfulness of his grammar and or the invention of his drama. The true reason, Olúfémi Táíwò suggests, is his “overall hell-raising activities” through “years of humanism…; of fighting for humanity; of speaking the truth to power; of nurturing and celebrating youth and challenging us to grow.” In one sentence, even more than his literary stature, Kongi means what he does to us because of his activisms, his commitment to ensuring that we do not take freedoms for granted or treat our shared humanity with levity.
Kongi’s career in that role is as long as and arguably now difficult to distinguish from his storied literary career and perhaps just as decorated. While his literary career has been crafted mostly in words and productions, his life as a public intellectual has been defined as much by his deeds, his actions, and the privations that he has endured as the trophies for these. This distinction between words, deeds, actions and privations is, of course, largely a tool of analytical convenience. In reality, they could be largely indistinguishable.
Thus, Biodun Jeyifo, a Wole Soyinka scholar, speaks of “Soyinka’s career in the theatre and his activism as an outspoken and increasingly influential public intellectual.” This is probably one reason among many why Olaokun Soyinka, Kongi’s first son, complained that he was “never totally sure why” his Dad was famous. Of course, being famous is not necessarily the same as being public but now, no one seriously disputes that Kongi is public property, owned by the world of ideas and of striving whether on loan from us or donated by us to the world.
Words, Actions, Symbolisms
Defying the calling of the public intellectual while re-defining it, Kongi’s life has been at once a commitment to the idea and ideals of our shared humanity; to our geography; and by his opposition to tyranny in any form. He clearly illustrated this triple bottom line in his exertions in pursuit of a humane ending to the Nigerian Civil War. For this, he suffered incarceration from where he reminds us, in one of his most famous lines, that “[t]he man dies who keeps silent in the face of tyranny”.
A.R. Crewe points out that The Man Died, “rests on a single unified purpose: to challenge the Nigerian conscience out of a state of increasingly self-corrupting apathy.” In The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis Kongi himself argues that “that space, Nigeria, cannot be the duty and the burden of the writer and intellectual alone’ It is arguably this realization that has defined Kongi’s “overall hail raising activities” of public communication using words, actions, and symbolisms on behalf of both good conscience and freedoms.
His major contributions in defence and advocacy for our freedoms, in my view fall into five categories. First, Kongi has been a principled humanist, advocate for non-discrimination and for humane governance. This he has demonstrated repeatedly in his interventions in situations and on behalf of victims of wars of mass atrocity from Biafra to Darfur. Even before these, Kongi had dramatized the extent of his commitment to humane governance through in real life as the “Mystery Gunman” who substituted took over the radio studio in Ibadan in 1964 to speak some home truths to a renegade regional Premier, his party and the people of Western Nigeria over what was widely believed to be malgovernance and rigged elections. Given that the prosecution in the ensuing case was never able to establish the identity of the Mystery Gunman and that Kongi was indeed discharged and acquitted in the subsequent prosecution, I’m obliged here to add a caveat here that we may never, as a matter of the law know the identity of the Mystery Gunman.
Second, because he is a writer and artiste, we take Kongi’s commitment to freedom of expression for granted but pay little attention to his equally storied practice and defence of freedom of association. Recognising as he does that the fullest potentials of civic life do not exist in any straitjackets, he has as a matter of habit, lent his star quality in recalibrating or disrupting otherwise hopelessly unbalanced balance of power on behalf of good civic causes that would otherwise not have no chance against the forces of tyranny. From his role in the foundation of what one critic has described as “the non-conformist, non-conventional ‘social’ club, the Pyrates Confraternity” (now better known as the National Association of Seadogs) to his associations with such formations as the Citizens’ Forum, Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO) and the Campaign for Democracy (CD), among others, Kongi has always been willing to test the frontiers of, support and abide by the disciplines of multiple associational forms. One part of this is Kongi’s passionate investment in inspiring and mentoring the youth.
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