On account of the pogrom?

Yes, on account of the pogrom which had taken place earlier. Forgive me if I miss out details but you can read all this in greater detail and sequence in my memoirs, You Must Set Forth At Dawn. I went to the conference, my colleagues were not present and when I returned to Nigeria, the first skirmishes had taken place – on the northern border, and I realised that soon, it would be impossible to travel to Briafra. I was restless. I knew I couldn’t function until I had crossed the lines in search of them. I said, ‘When I get there, I will find Christopher (Okigbo) somewhere’ and then get to Ojukwu. That was the reason why I went, a chance at that last moment that something could be done. Some people continue to narrate that I went across to persuade Ojukwu to renounce the secession. No, I didn’t go to persuade Ojukwu to renounce anything – it was far more complicated. Some of us still felt that it was still possible to avoid an all-out shooting war.

Let me state this clearly that I totally disagree with the philosophy of unity at any cost, a simplistic rendition of that pietistic mantra: United we stand, divided we fall. What infantile nonsense! It has no basis in logic or rationality whatever. Sometimes, not only is it that “small is beautiful” but also “small is perfectable”. People have the right anytime to say, “We want to leave this union, whatever it is”, any kind of union, politically or whatever type of union. Peoples have the right at anytime to say, “Let’s have a referendum in this area.”. That is, for me, part and parcel of democracy. Look at what’s happening in even England today – Scotland wants independence. Long, long ago, Cameroon and Nigeria, the people detached themselves from Nigeria here and went to Cameroon. Ethiopia-Eritrea remains instructive, so does the even more recent example of the Sudan. Whenever things get to a certain unmanageable stage, people look at separationist options.

There is nothing – I want to stress this – absolutely nothing morally wrong or pernicious in a people saying – we want our own autonomous unit. It’s a childish notion, something which has been implanted in our brain, to chant or be conditioned by the gospel of: “What white man has put together, let no black man put asunder.” What kind of nonsense is that? True, I do prefer that we stay together, if only because I don’t like to keep spending time obtaining visas when I want to go see a former next-door neighbour and collaborators. Also, I am partial to existence within a plurality of cultures. It offers a richness of resources, a dynamic of infinite sensibilities. But to say that you must go to war over “unity”? No! Go the civilised way – plebiscite. Instead we wasted an estimated two million lives through bullets, sickness and starvation – to preserve a European myth? It’s a lack of maturity.

You spent your detention in Kirikiri and Kaduna Prisons. How did you manage to remain intensely creative in prison? Did it ever occur to you that you could be killed in prison?

Of course, I lived with that, especially because I was lied against while in prison. It’s the most horrible, debilitating aspect of prison life – to be in no position to respond to those lies, all kinds of dangerous lies attributed to me as my confession flaunted around. It made you feel – objectively – that the public mind was being prepared for your eventual elimination.

Oh! That period was very bad, very demoralising, I must confess to you. Not for long though. I finally said to myself, “Okay, you are in prison now, your circuit of volition has been contracted and you must create a new micro-existence within that microcosmic world of prison.” You can read about that lie in The Man Died. It’s true that I thought about the possibility of my being killed in order to give that lie a permanent life, to be killed in a manner in which those outside would say ‘serves him right’ not knowing that to cover up the secret is why you were killed.

Yes, after a while, I said – that’s their business, those who want to believe, there is nothing you can do about it. It’s very similar to what happens today on that much abused medium, internet, over which the coarsest lies are splattered and you just wonder what kind of creatures these are who take advantage of what we fought for— the freedom of expression -to dish out the most baseless and revolting calumny on individuals. But what can you do about it? These people are faceless cowards, hiding behind anonymity. They were born cowards, their progenitors are cowards, their children will probably be cowards. At the beginning you feel violated, you long to be able to locate just one of them, slowly squeeze life out of that person and make him drown in his own vomit. Then of course you recall that such are the rewards of democracy – freedom of expression.

The worst part however – let me spare a few more words on this and speak personally – the worst part is the remorseless continuity. Lies are told for a purpose, and until that purpose is achieved, the putrid purveyors dare not stop. When they see that you remain affected, they then pick on your children. Look at the scandal which they published about one of my daughters. First, it was supposed to be a torrid affair with Obasanjo. A few years later, she was supposed to be embroiled with Governor Amaechi. The pattern is so discernible that it should be laughable. It is not however. Innocent lives are blighted in the process if the victims happen to be weak willed. The moment I tongue lash somebody in government, or even a designated sacred cow in society, that moment another round of calumny is inaugurated. It is so crudely predictable!

Well now, is there a message here for the media? There is nothing you can do about those things called blog, facebook, tweeter etc. etc. but I believe that there can be a reduction of sewage space for the accommodation of the smut vendors on internet. In the print media, when there are letters to the editor, you are very careful, you don’t want to be sued for libel; so you are careful what you publish. But your online newspapers, I ask myself, “Don’t you think you have the same sense of responsibility for the carry-over?” Let me cite one of the most recent – and notorious – instances of an egregious abuse of your accomodativeness. It is a message also for the younger generation – a present for the younger generation. Lead your own lives. Separate your own future from the chequered lives of your parents. Don’t inherit enmities with which they burdened their own existence, otherwise, you will never live a life of your own. And it’s something I believe in very passionately. That was why I wrote about the episode of my encounter with one of Abacha’s daughters in Wimbledon. I felt no animosity whatsoever. In fact I was distressed that I hadn’t offered to buy her a drink, so I told my son, Olaokun who was with me at the time, she might think I hate her or I wasn’t warm enough, let’s go and look for her and buy her a drink. I don’t hold that biblical nonsense that the sins of the father will be visited on the sons. It is blasphemous and should be expunged from biblical studies. Why my advice to young Abacha is “Don’t take on your betters, you are a neophyte. Don’t try to intervene in what you don’t understand. Go and learn from my attitude towards your sister whom I met without any rancour and learn to deal with history in the same way. Above all, don’t promote calumny”.

We must speak candidly. It is also a symptom of where we are, that the son of a thief, an international thief, so attested, documented, whose crimes are being unveiled everyday, should feel entitled to defend the name of his father at the expense of truth. And that is where I wish to end this theme – I repeat my call on President Jonathan to have the moral courage to rescind – I know he won’t do it, but we shall keep saying it at every opportunity – he must find a way to rescind that Centenary Honours List because that it is a disgrace and a shame on this nation. It makes me embarrassed to call myself a Nigerian; that a sitting president should compile the names of a hundred supposedly worthy people and include that of a loathsome dictator among them. It should have been sufficient, if he wanted to honour the military, he should just have picked one representative of the breed – maybe somebody like Murtala Muhammed. So that the military don’t complain that they were passed over. But to put Sani Abacha on that list side by side with Chinua Achebe, Emeka Anyaoku, Mike Adenuga etc. etc, is an abomination. That Honours event was an abomination. Jonathan’s act was a symbolic negation, a desecration of everything a number of us have stood for in all our lives. Let that list be discarded and consigned to oblivion to make way for a truly sustainable one. And no amount of trickle-down or newly inventive calumny will stop that call, as long as I choose to carry a document of Nigerian citizenship.

In the Trials of Brother Jero and Jero’s Metamorphosis, you anticipated the charlatans in our Pentecostal churches today. What do you say of these Brother Jero’s children in our churches today?

It is a serious phenomenon I discovered in recent years. Before, they were comical, they were charlatans and fairly harmless. But such practitioners are a dying breed. Today, some of them are laundering machines, they are being used to launder heavy money. Some of them are politically dangerous and I think the proposed taxation on religious institutions will expose the extraneous sources of their income because taxation goes beyond merely paying money. They will have to disclose their sources, their books will be opened. I think it’s about time that this is done. It is important that the resources of churches, if they are reaching a height of mega-millions, be subject to examination. Laundered money can provide a cover for resources that are passed on to fund very dangerous elements. Churches as well as mosques – I’m talking about religious bodies generally. I am speaking of the reality that confronts the nation at this moment.

You had rigorous debates in the late 70s and early 80s with the Biodun Jeyifos: leftist scholars and academics and those critics you described as pseudo-traditionalists and neo-Tarzanists: the Chinweizus. The leftists essentially argued that your literary production lacked rigorous class contents and that you were too pessimistic while the Chinweizus argued that you were too Eurocentric, too modernist, that you suffered from Hopkins Disease, in your complexity as a writer. We would like you to revisit those debates and tell us what you think of them now?

I write as the Muse dictates, not the critic. I distinguish between censorship and criticism. Censorship is telling a writer you must use this sole ideological prism to view and transmit reality or your art is engagement in social treachery. For me, that is pernicious, intolerably arrogant and fascistic.

Why did you dedicate your Nobel Lecture to Nelson Mandela?

Why should that surprise you? I have been obsessed with South Africa since I was politically conscious. I told you, that was why I entered the military as a student joining the officer corps for a short while. I fled when they were going to pack me to the Suez instead of where I wanted to go – which was South Africa. I packed up my kit, saying “No, I wanted to train for South Africa, not for the Suez. You go and capture a canal on someone’s land, then declare war when he resists, and then you call me up to serve. Remember the Anglo-French invasion? I was called up and I said “No, that was not it”. That was why I left the officer corps. Fortunately, we the interior native – you know, the colonialists were very funny. Those in Lagos were British subjects, we from Abeokuta etc, the interior, were ‘protected subjects’ and we were not fully bound by the laws of the British. I was not a British citizen. I was like a second class citizen, not a real British citizen. Nice to be a second class citizen sometimes. I was able to go back to my studies after the intervention of the Students’ Adviser for foreign students.

I have always been obsessed with South Africa. And Mandela represents for me the bearer of African dignity. That’s why I used that expression that “the soul of Africa has departed” when he died. It was something which I didn’t really have to think about, that was how I felt on Nelson Mandela’s death. I did some reading at Marymount University after his death. It’s been a personal obsession with me. It was the most natural thing for me to have dedicated that lecture to Nelson Mandela. I remember our first meeting after his release as one of the most moving encounters of my exisence.

Do you still go hunting? You still do that these days of Boko Haram?

Well, I will tell you something about my hunting career and Boko Haram. I have told the authorities including the police. First of all, I enjoy hunting on my own, which is my favourite – to disappear in the bush by myself. And then I also go with traditional hunters; I do that from time to time. We go all the way to Upper Ogun area – the Shaki region. Often we encountered some Fulani herdsmen traversing the forest.

I remember once when I shot down a guinea fowl, it fell far. When I got to the spot, I found one of their dogs had picked it up and was running to his master. I shouted, ‘Stop Thief! And you, get that dog back here with my guinea fowl.’ That was the spirit and he shouted back, ‘It was the dog which took it, not I, what’s wrong?’ Very friendly. In fact, sometimes when you got lost in the bush, sometimes you listened for small radio sounds. If there were some herdsmen around, you followed until you found your way to them, and then the way to civilisation. It was a very good relationship.

Over the past few years, I began to notice that the character of the herdsmen had changed; they were different people, very hostile and surly, really aggressive. I would say to my companions, “These are not our regular herdsmen, something is going wrong.” It is one of the reasons I asked for a private meeting with [Gen. Owoye] Azazi and he confirmed that something was indeed amiss. He revealed that he was in fact coming from the United States where he had gone to negotiate patrol helicopters. I said, “Good, as long as you know.” But after one or two other encounters, anytime we went deep, we didn’t just go with shotguns and small calibre rifles. Just in case. We also changed our own modus operandi in the bush because something was happening; this was very dangerous. But I can’t let some fanatics come and deprive me of one of the few pleasures I have in life.

Were you ever confronted by wild animals like lions?

No, never. But I’ll tell you what I consider the most dangerous animal in that bush – the wild boar. Those things can be dangerous. I have seen them seize a dog with their tusks and fling the dog afar. These are more dangerous than efon or the equivalent of the wild buffalo as long as the latter is not wounded. Then it becomes a different story. Hunters all go out to kill it; if not it becomes a real menace in the bush.

It is a national shame that the secondary school girls abducted in Chibok are not yet found. Don’t you think that it is now a tragedy that we are yet to rescue them?

It is a failing, a tragedy, a burden on national and international conscience. It should continue to haunt decent humanity until the stigma is removed. But the front-line responsibility is ours in this nation, on the government and its security services. We cannot rest, or be seen to rest, until the girls are recovered.

What is your reaction to the pardon granted Mohammed Abacha by Jonathan on the N446 billion issue?

It is obscene. Whether we are talking about Alamieyeseigha or we are going backward to take in Obasanjo’s pardon to Salisu Buhari, when a precedent was set. And it’s sad that Jonathan has continued in that line of cavalier pardon and especially in Mohammed Abacha who has been proven to be a torturer in addition to an incontinent receiver of national loot. Please, all of you bear in mind, it’s not as if these crimes are not in the public domain. Immediately after the restoration of civilian rule, we had a conference at the journalists’ headquarters in Iyanganku, Ibadan, in which people came and narrated their experiences, those who were tortured and dehumanised. Muhammad Abacha was repeatedly fingered by his victims.

Even worse emerged under the Oputa Panel. We know what everybody did during that time. Those who enjoyed the privileges and the loot of governance must make restoration of a kind by undergoing trial whenever they are found out, and no matter how late. But to grant pardon to such people is a crime against society.

When elders get as old as you are, the tendency is to move closer to God either because they are afraid of death or they just want to make heaven. Reading portions of your memoir, You Must Set Forth At Dawn where you describe feelingly deaths of your friends and a place already designated for your burial, I thought I should ask you for your reflections on death. What does death mean to you and why are you not afraid of it?

Well, let’s put it this way: it is a very rare kind of humanity which doesn’t look at death as an unpleasant event. But my attitude towards it is that I won’t be around to experience it. I take it practically. I have designated where I will like to be buried.

What do you say to people who think that they need to do certain things to make heaven?

I don’t want to discourage them in their beliefs. You see, I’m not a religious or anti-religion fanatic one way or the other. If it makes people comfortable and, shall we say, encourage them to lead an ethical life since they believe in heaven, by all means, we shouldn’t discourage them. But followers of any kind of religion who believe that they should destroy those who do not believe in their path towards heaven, or what they call paradise, are insecure and tormented souls. Let every individual hang on to his or her beliefs. But this should not be at the expense of accelerating the passage of others to their concept of paradise or hell – especially with violence – simply because they do not follow your own path. This is what really gets my hackles up about religion. Religion should remain a private matter. Spirituality is a very private matter.

Is one religion better than the other?

I believe that all religions are equal. In Christianity, Islam, Orisa worship, Hinduism etc. etc. the ultimate destination is spiritual. Religion should be internalised and become personal. Because Orisa religion is filled with metaphors of human experience. As a writer, a mytho-poet, I also find religions similarly endowed with metaphors, most satisfying. Another reason that I am partial to Orisa worship than other religions is that Orisa religion allows you to find your own path to the Supreme Being through each deity. Within the same family, you could have the father following Sango, the mother following a different path.

The child is born and the babalawo divines that – this is the child of Orisa Oko. Within that same household, you have others who follow different paths to godhead; different paths to their inner spiritual intuitions, different paths to that encapsulation of what they feel exists beyond the physical persona. Along the way, something might happen to that individual in real life and he goes to the babalawo and he says, “Ah! Maybe there was a mistake, try this other path.” That’s it. There is no quarrel. The wife doesn’t say “I won’t cook for you because you are following Orunmila or you are not following Esu”. It is ultimate inner harmony. That is what existence should primarily be about.

This interview was conducted and published three years ago when Professor Soyinka turned 80.