The Soyinka interview cover design, July 2024

Professor Wole Soyinka at 90 still looks very well. A head of snow-white hair makes his affable face noticeable. If he is in high spirits and you pull his legs, he will give you a wink or two of mischief. Aging gracefully, he remains a workaholic, a writer of prodigious powers. If he is not teaching, he is directing plays, writing songs, writing poems and essays, and planning to do another film. Chronicles of the Happiest People on Earth, about 500-page novel, was published when he was 85. His collection of essays, Of Power and Freedom, was published in two hefty volumes in 2022. This masterful collection is, more or less, a sequel to the perceptive Arts, Dialogue and Outrage. Wole Soyinka’s eloquence is as thrilling as ever. Before those two volumes, he had published a wonderful collection called Beyond Aesthetics: Use, Abuse, and Dissonance in African Art Traditions. And then he hit the book market in 2023 with Selected Poems, 1965—2022, A Retrospective. All the exertions that these demanded did not prevent him from running his intervention series— essays which he uses primarily to wage war against debilitating amnesia and absent memory in public discourse.  This is where Soyinka, wearing the armour of objectivity, throws polemical punches. Still, he is in high demand all over the world for lectures and speeches. This demon worker, this work machine, cannot tell where the energy is coming from. The old-age books are as sublimely written, humming, slow burning, immersive, entirely captivating and enriched by his signature wit, the flow of his insight and passion as more than forty books before them. Soyinka’s extraordinary talent is not flagging at all: he has just finished writing another play. In a sense, then, this interview is a tribute to a fecund mind and a remarkable humanist with an acute sense of justice.

-Kunle Ajibade, Lagos,July 2024

You came back to Nigeria from Los Angeles last week. Tonight, you’re headed to Abu Dhabi, where you teach at the New York University—Abu Dhabi. From there, you will go to Morocco and thereafter back to Los Angeles, stopping over in London en route to Brazil—all within two weeks.  This is sheer energy on display. You also have this power for total recall. Would it be right to say that you derive utmost joy and intellectual nourishment in being permanently on the move? How are you able to sustain your mental alertness and physical agility?

Let me begin with a preliminary statement, that I want you to understand that this exchange is part of a project, which was started by Awam Amkpa, one of my former students, now my boss at NYU-Abu Dhabi. He decided that there has to be a Soyinka Memory Tank Project. I think it probably came from my discussion on certain issues with him and, in the process, mentioning and re-narrating details of events he was never aware of. And he was astonished that there was so much material in my memory over and beyond even the biographies which I have written. As you know, biographies are subject to self-censorship a lot. He said, Why don’t I set up a studio so that anytime you recall something you just call up the studio operator and so on and speak from your recollections, supply all these details which you’ve been talking about over drinks, during dinners. At first, I thought it was a weird, impossible idea. But I have to admit that over the years, I did come around to accepting the fact that maybe this is essential, especially these days when there are so many untruths flying all over the place. Not peculiar to our country alone, I must say, but I have noticed that some of the greatest manufacturers of lies you will encounter anywhere in the whole wide world are Nigerians.  So, I have agreed to the idea of Memory Tank Project because this also saves me the trouble of giving interviews. I can always tell people that there is a resource material available somewhere, a memory tank, to serious scholars who would want to flesh out certain details or establish some missing links.  I’m assuming that this would be a kind of prototype for people who are in the public eye or just ordinary people who are living interesting but sometimes complex lives. So, I’m warning you in advance: this interview would be used elsewhere. It saves me also some further contributions to the memory tank which is going to be a continuous process. That’s a preliminary contextualisation of this interview.

Professor Wole Soyinka

Talking about constant movement, I am not greatly enamoured of all these travels. And the proof of that is that each time I enter my sanctuary in Ijegba (my home in Abeokuta) even if for a day or two or after a week I have succeeded in being there for continuous moments, leaving there always raises the question, What bloody hell am I going to do outside this place? Not that I object to travelling. Not really. Going for a workshop is part of my work. I would take that in stride. But one can do too much. I believe that I have said to myself so often, Why don’t I just stay put here and tell the rest of the world to go to hell, quite frankly. So, it’s not the travelling aspect of it. Travelling has become, these days, no longer conducive to one’s temperament, even if I had some pleasure travelling when I was younger. Now, there is so much insecurity. In the past, you even enjoyed sneaking through borders even when you didn’t have a visa!  That was part of the fun.  Now, of course, all that is impossible. If there was any pleasure before, all that has gone through the window. I don’t mind being lifted and ‘transponded’ by internet, finding myself somewhere else. That’s okay.

 I don’t hate your religion. I just hate what you’re doing with your religion. You can believe anything you want, but what you do with it, especially about other human beings, interests me a lot. And, for me, that is where the battle begins. 

Is travelling part of my resource sustenance and equilibrium? I acknowledge the fact that the nature of my work, not merely as a writer, as a director, as a curator of festivals and then, to top it all, as an activist getting involved in human rights situations all around the globe, and belonging, somehow carelessly, to a number of organisations, which requires one’s physical presence, imposes travelling on me. I have learned even to continue creativity on the move. In other words, I have developed a different rhythm of work where interruptions don’t matter. I just take off exactly where I left before. And sometimes if there are interruptions, it becomes a source of inspiration.  And I frankly enjoy exchanging ideas with people from different cultures, from different intellectual origins, orientations, worldviews and so on. Yes, those encounters, definitely, are part of my nourishment as a human being even before being an artist. The question of where I get the energy, I have no idea. I know I have had close calls. Somehow, I came out of them. For me, I just take them in stride. That’s part of being mortal. I have held on so far.

What about your mental alertness, your power for total recall?

Total recall is not the same thing as mental alertness. Total recall is an unpredictable gift.Something triggers something in your memory and suddenly you have a total picture of what happened at the time. All the details: who were there, what shape you were in. It’s like you’re running a reel, a film reel, across your sight, sometimes the least affected moments are just triggered up by certain encounters with total strangers. As for mental alertness, that perhaps has to do very much with the fact that constantly I’m wrestling with ideas. And a new idea for me is a totally new realm of exploration. That exploration goes beyond, for me, very often, the triggering event and leads to other questions. So that even when I am not in the classroom, when I’m not talking to anybody, I’m talking to myself.

What have your travels taught you about life? In other words, if the world is a marketplace, both literally and figuratively— and I am echoing your Samarkand And Other Markets I Have Known here — what lessons can we all learn or should we all learn from the markets that you’ve known? 

First of all, the market is both for me a metaphor and reality. What is socialisation all about? Exchange. You exchange ideas, you exchange experiences. The market is one place where you can exchange. It’s a selfish exchange, from my point of view. It is one that is selfish, and you just wander through. A market presents you with a gamut of life, of existence. You can see that in commodities. Every new commodity, in fact, tells a story in itself.  And this actually is not a recent acquisition, that attitude of the market. I recall and I think I narrate this in Ake: The Years of Childhood when I used to accompany my mother and her fellow evangelists to the market, trying to convert the traditional worshipers. Sometimes I would get lost in the market. Within the market, they thought they were teaching “native pagans”, “infidels.” But for me, it was the opposite. I found that I was learning, I was experiencing different cultures within a small encirclement, or large—something that was very broad. It was there that I, of course, encountered in any meaningful way the followers of traditional religion. You find the Babalawos in the market, the Olorisa in the marketplace. And sometimes, as I describe in Samarkand And Other Markets I have Known, here in Nigeria, of all places, you find the Hare Krishna people treading through marketplaces. When I was a child, there was no Hare Krishna. This was what appealed to me, the different variety of materials, not just a question of food, craft, curios, etc., etc. Of course, women actually lived in the market.

The question of where I get the energy, I have no idea. I know I have had close calls. Somehow, I came out of them. For me, I just take them in stride. That’s part of being mortal. I have held on so far.

They cooked in the market, not just to sell. There was this microcosm of domesticity in the marketplace.  And I believe that my response to artistic materials also began in the marketplace. So that as I grew up, anywhere I went— this was when travelling was a kind of joy, pleasure really— I would get up early in the morning and head for the old part of the town— it didn’t matter where— to look at what life truly  was. And at that time what even the old architecture told you, the old architecture in the old part of the town whether in Moscow or New York. Just the old parts which are the links between the past, the present and sometimes even the future.  They offered me metaphors for existence. They still do.  Even though there is regulation in the market, there is order. If you are an Alatarodo (pepper seller), you don’t go and set up your stall in the cap seller’s (Onifila) stall. Despite the tumult, there is order, I feel some kind of naturalness about it, very different from the order or the regimented life outside the market, the real sophisticated urban society. I feel very much at home in those marketplaces anywhere in the world. I narrated how, once in Paris, I discovered that books, while appropriate on the bookshelves, in the bookstores, they took on a new life, a new quality of even auto existence, in marketplaces. For instance,  I once walked very early in the morning along the River Seine in Paris, just when they were opening those locked up boxes of books, different kinds of books, ancient books , maps, memoirs,  cartons of journals, a renewal of life began as those boxes were being opened, a totally new aspect of human occupation was exposed and I walked up and down, browsing through those books, ancient pamphlets, new books as well. I discovered Onitsha, the novel by the Nobel Prize winner J.M.G. Clezio, (long before he won the Nobel) along the River Seine in one of those boxes. And that struck me. What is Onitsha doing here? And it is by a French man, a French man who happened to have lived in Onitsha. And so that just captured the essence of market for me. Always new marvels, let me put it that way. As I said, it is both a metaphor and a reality. At the end of the day the market closes down and total calm takes over. A place that was very boisterous, full of life, full of rhythm, music, improvisations and so on just shuts down. Everything closes down until the following morning. It is like the world renewing itself, so to speak.

Professor Wole Soyinka

Do you still have the urge to travel through Space one of these days? Why does that fascinate you?

Space? Try me! I have no idea how this fascination developed. All I can assert is that I could point out to you a number of constellations in the galaxy all the way from early secondary school at Government College, Ibadan—beginning with the Plough. Just recalled another early one—the Cassiopeia. In boarding school, I spent lots of night time trying to trace them in the sky. Pius Oleghe, a classmate, was a fellow sky nut. We used to scan the sky together. And then, I tried to infect my children by subscribing to Astronomy journals in their names. I still run into those packages, some unopened including VHS cassettes. Children are hopeless!

At 90, you’ve lost relations, friends, comrades and some prized possessions. Could you talk a bit about your losses and griefs? 

One never really gets over losses. That’s what I have found. Yes, the mourning phase is readily acknowledged. It makes you wonder: what a necessity! And of course, it makes you question the whole meaning of existence. So, in a sense, even those whom you lose are still with you, in a certain sense. But in another poignant way, it is sweet and sour. Sweet in the sense that memory is still with you. And recollections? It is like you start talking about a friend and that friend comes alive. And you start laughing. You remember his idiosyncrasies, his excesses, his quirks and so on. And at that moment there is a resurrection of that intimacy we had with that person who disappeared. It’s often that. Sometimes, it is really very painful and you say, Ah, if only this person was still here. And that happens especially in moments when you are enjoying something and feel Oh, how cruel, because that person is not there to share that moment with you. As for losses of materials, I got used to losing things quite early. And I have been schooled. On this last trip, I lost my toilet bag in the plane.  I looked for it. I knew I opened it. I got something out of it. When it was time to pack my things, I couldn’t find it. Later on, I realised what must have happened. It must have fallen down. I phoned the airline. They looked for it. They said they didn’t find it. Okay, don’t worry— I am always losing things.

What about your computers?

Ah, the accountant in my university one day said to me— because in the States your department can buy a new computer for you as part of your work— Mr Soyinka, do you eat computers?  I said, this is the way this one happened: I was sitting down waiting to board and I started working on my laptop and I had a glass of wine on the same table. People were coming in to sit down. The next thing I knew: somebody just swung her bag, it went around and knocked the glass over, my drink poured onto my computer. She didn’t even look. She didn’t blink. She wasn’t aware of what she had done. I said, What am I to do? The computer crashed. There are many other incidents, you know. It is a miracle that I have managed to survive losses of computers.

Professor Wole Soyinka

Have you ever lost any manuscripts?

Oh yes, I have lost a manuscript. In fact, I would tell you the title— The Strong Breed. While I was working on it, I used to go to the former British Council in Ibadan. This was in the early sixties.  I used to go and watch plays at the British Council where Christopher Kolade and others were rehearsing. I was going to poach some of their actors at that time. They came to see me off. I was standing by the side of the car leaning on top of it.  Every single moment I recollected afterwards. In fact, I had just finished The Strong Breed. So, I left the manuscript on top of the car. Why was I carrying it about? At that time, I was so scared of losing manuscripts or something happening in my absence. If I finished a manuscript, I would be carrying it around until I was able to duplicate it and send it to a publisher or whatever. The opposite thing happened.  I drove off with the manuscript. I was living in Agodi, in Ibadan, at the time. I got to the house. Where is the manuscript? Oh, my God! I realised what had happened. I drove back quickly. I drove along the road where the sheets could have fallen. I did not recover one single sheet. It took a while, certainly more than a year, before I could sit down and rewrite the play. That was a painful one. Very painful. It happens. Sometimes you lose your manuscript on your computer, or the computer crashes in the middle of it. I once lost about 123 pages of a novel. The computer just chewed the pages up. In those early days of the computer, I remember going to someone named Olu Agunloye, a technical buff. I said, Please, can you recover this work? He managed to piece together a page or two. Then with his wicked humour, he said, Prof, I can recover the rest for you. But, see, I would have to get a knife and split open your head. I wanted to split open his head! (laughs). So that took a while again. It happens.  I once wrote a poem about my lost poems. That’s in my collection, Samarkand And Other Markets I Have Known.

How do you make sure that you don’t lose manuscripts again? Do you cloud-save now, or you just copy and keep?

Again, this is part of the whole irony, that you’re working hard to make sure you don’t lose things. When I was writing my novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, for instance, I almost went insane. The simple reason was, from time to time, the computer crashed.  I took most of the blame because I would copy to Cloud, copy to Document, copy to Desktop and then work on the Document. And then I would start work on a former version. Afterwards, when I opened the computer, I was going maybe into the Desktop, to a hard disk, but then resume work on an outdated version. Hours later, I would get that nasty feeling of ‘You’ve been here before. this was not where you closed down your computer yesterday. Or last week. Or:  this does not fit into what went before.’  You scrolled back and, sure enough, it’s deja vu.  But because there are so many versions going on your head, you can never be one hundred per cent certain. I had presumed a baseless confidence in my power of recollections. Images are one thing, but prose narrating events, inventing  events, assuming the personalities of your characters — that is another matter. It drove me crazy. After that novel, I said, No more prose. Not on computers, anyway (laughs).

You’ve escaped death many times in your life, particularly during the Abacha regime. Would you consider yourself lucky to be alive today?

I consider it a bit of a miracle that I managed to survive that period.  Because Abacha was mad.  He was obsessed. He was really obsessed with me. Many people paid heavy price simply because they were associated with Wole Soyinka, and they were available. A story which I told the other day at The Metropolitan Club in Lagos was one of my favourite stories. A driver who was now working for yet another military officer had worked for Abacha. And he heard the host and the visitor talking about Wole Soyinka. It was the host who told me the story. After the visitor left, the driver went to his new boss and said, Excuse me sir, this Wole Soyinka you are talking about, is it the same one who my master used to talk about? Please, just do me one favour. I want to meet him. The boss said, Why do you want to meet him?  I want to know the person who gave my boss Sani Abacha such nightmares.  He said, I want to know that person. Because anytime he heard the name Wole Soyinka, he went into a frenzy. Abacha was desperate. He and his goons set up consulates outside. They were not real consulates. They set up trading companies that were fake. One was situated in Bayswater, where I used to stay, not far from where Muhammadu Buhari attempted to kidnap Umaru Dikko in the UK.  It was purely to trap, to get hold of us.  Several security units of police added us on their watch list. Afterwards, watching for us and for those who they were tracking. I wasn’t the only one.  In Atlanta, they set up fake consulate. We fought to make sure that the consulate in Atlanta, where I was teaching at Emory University at the time was not set up. The envelope that passed to some of the city counsellors was heavy. They admitted it. By the way, you know that I am an honorary citizen of the state of Georgia. And so, our American friends told these stories on the day of my investiture about what happened. They eventually succumbed to the pressure to set up that consulate, that fake consulate. And the President of my university insisted— because he got his report from the secret service in the US— he insisted that any time I was flying out, I had to be accompanied by policemen. On returning, they would send the police to come pick me up right at the door of the plane. It was quite touching. What went on then is one of the reasons why I find it so ignoble, so contemptible, that anybody should ever try to trivialise what Nigerians went through during that period. Whatever your quarrel with me, whatever your beef, you must learn to respect people’s struggle. Or be neutral. But don’t come years later and then try and trivialise it, debase it and lie about the roles which people play. I find it contemptible and subhuman. It is part of the anger which still burns in me. That was a life-changer. People lost their lives. People were tortured senseless.  When the Truth and Reconciliation Commission— before the Justice Oputa Panel —there was a gathering at Iyaganku, in Ibadan, at the NUJ Centre, in which many people narrated their experiences.  And one I can never forget was this young man who later on went to work for the governor in Osun State. I won’t mention his name. And at one time they tortured him to try and get him to incriminate other people.  And he was a very strong person, strong-willed and he withstood all this torture. So, finally, they brought his parents. They brought him out. They said they would now torture his parents in front of him if he did not sign their papers. This fellow happened to be a holder of black belt in judo, by the way. He pounced on the policeman who was wearing a holster. He disarmed him, took his gun. And then put the gun to his own head and pulled the trigger. He preferred to kill himself rather than break under the horror of watching his parents tortured.  What he didn’t know was that the police don’t normally load their guns, at least some of them, when they have to deal with suspects, just as a precaution. The gun clicked, clicked, and nothing happened. That was how vile that time was. When people come around today and talk glibly about that period, I often wish that Abacha would come back and teach them a lesson.

Professor Wole Soyinka

I understand that you’ve just finished writing a new play at 90. Tell us what the play is about and when are we going to see it on stage?

The idea of writing the play came about through the course I have been teaching outside. The course is titled “Faith, Power and Ideology.”  And it has to do with the killing of Deborah Samuel, which is something that has obsessed me for quite a while. Not just the killing but the arrogant relegation of justice that followed. The failure and reluctance to prosecute those killers who are identified and filmed. And the fact that one of the killers was so contemptuous of justice that he could pose on the internet with a box of matches. That is what triggered that play.  I have used that episode in my classes. I have asked my students to google Deborah Samuel and see what is there. They couldn’t believe, by the way, that it happened. Then, I told them I wanted to see their treatment of that episode in their imaginative reconstructions.  I used that episode in my teaching and I left it alone. But it just kept nagging me. I didn’t have any peace of mind until I had written it.

When are we going to have it on stage?

Certainly, it’s not going to be very long.

Each time people say that they want to be like you, you always demur, you often discourage them. Do you do that out of humility or for other reasons? 

Oh, I am not a humble person.

Really?

I don’t think so.

I think you are

Well, I think it is also for other reasons. I believe very much in that injunction, which says, Be yourself.  I like to have people discover themselves. It’s a principle of my teaching, whatever subject it is.  The first thing is: you get to know yourself. You’ve got to know what is inside you. And then you bring that to bear on the subject, especially the humanities. With the sciences, it is different—two times two is four. Full stop. You can be yourself or anything you want. That’s your lot. You cannot get away from that. The world of imagination, of creativity, very often embraces history, philosophy, social relationships, and understanding of humanity. Before you can move into that zone of exploration, either of what other people have written or whatever you have acquired through life, there has to be a kind of grounding, and understanding of your mental processes and your temperament so that you can at least attempt to be objective, rather than subjecting yourself wholly to the ideas of other people. Again, what are you bringing into what you are learning? It has to be some inner intellectual quality, creative quality, however weak, it doesn’t matter. But at least you must begin with that. So, it is not just a question of you don’t want them to be Soyinka. It’s just saying be yourself.  Begin by being yourself. You can take what you want like a magpie from different people, not one. I don’t believe very much in role models. Not even myself.  It’s just my temperament. I don’t believe in role models. I admire things in people. And of course, I never have any hesitation to borrow from people and acknowledge them. From this person, I picked this. This one inspired me. I met somebody, for instance, not long ago. A young writer. Just a few days ago.  She doesn’t know this up till now. But watching something in her, made me do some variation on one of the characters in this play we were talking about just now.

 But do you have heroes?

Hero would be the wrong word to use. The idea of a hero is something I am not very fond of. As I said, there are people I admire enormously. We all, for instance, admire Nelson Mandela.  Nelson Mandela is the closest thing to a hero. There are other people I admire a lot, not just old people. Somebody like Newton JIbunoh comes to mind straight away. Jibunoh who crossed the Sahara Desert on his own. He did it twice. The day I saw him, I said, You know you are crazy. You should be locked up. You mean you survived the first time and you went back. Thank goodness I didn’t know you because, certainly, you would not have done that journey by yourself. But then I know also if I had made that journey with you, I would have got both of us killed.  Because you seem to be a more level-headed person than I am.  I would have done something absolutely stupid that would have got us killed. So, it’s a good thing that you were on your own. Now that I know you, if you want to go the next time don’t bother to call me.

Why are the issues of power and freedom so important to you, as a creative writer and as a public intellectual?

This is related to that injunction that I cited, Know yourself.  You cannot know yourself if you are in chains. You must actually feel freedom inside of you, to explore your world, to ask questions, to express your findings, to share your findings. Otherwise, you are not a complete human being.  And this has been my problem with ideologues. Agreed, one must not say I am distancing myself from ideology. One must study those ideologies. But don’t follow them intact. And if any ideology— and that embraces both the theocratic, and the secular — preach in any way the gospel of submission, it means that you are not free. If you accept it, it means you are not free. You’ve indentured yourself; you’ve indentured your mind; you’ve curtailed the potential fullness of your being. And when I encounter a tendency called revisionists being pilloried in certain progressive ideologies, revisionists being treated as the scum of the earth, that is already an indicative of absolutism, the craving of power over others, to dominate the thinking of others.  Recently, my present problem with some politicians and their followers is that I cannot conceive, for a moment, of mature people calling themselves Obidients, because this already implicates submission. People don’t just give names for nothing in Africa. Names have meanings. The word submission means obedience. Religion preaches submission but submission to whom? Each individual can find God himself or herself. Yes, you come to a community of believers, a market of spirituality, in which you sort of exchange spiritual intimations, disappointments, and failures. You believe that you can invoke collective energy and spiritual solace. You can invoke certain forces. All that is very good. Excellent.

We had a little problem here, electoral problem, and the next thing: people were marching, carrying banners in front of the military in Abuja, asking the soldiers to take over again, after what we went through.  Sometimes I don’t understand. Maybe there is a slavery limpet gene in some people.

But when I hear the word submission in any religion, whatever religion, I consider it anti-human straightaway. Let everybody find his spiritual direction. Go for guidance. Yes. Exchange. Yes. Develop certain ethical principles, and agree on those ethical principles. To follow an ethical principle does not require submission to intermediaries. No. Find Godhead in your own heart, in your soul, if you believe in Godhead. Basically, to me, religions are just metaphors for existence, living, active metaphors for existence.  Nothing wrong with them, but they become anti-human, enemies of humanity when the idea of submission comes in. When you are submitting yourself, you are submitting yourself to another human being who cannot prove in any form that he or she has a closer relationship, a closer and more acute, benevolent understanding of Godhead than you do.  And we have the examples all around. Look at the corruption, the abuse in the Roman Catholic Church of young boys, the scandals, the corruption. Look at the violence in the Islamic religion, again enforcing followers, and capturing people in the name of a supreme deity. And then you come and talk of submission? I don’t want to hear that. No. If I talk like this, people say, Oh, he hates our religion. I don’t hate your religion. I just hate what you’re doing with your religion. You can believe anything you want, but what you do with it, especially about other human beings, interests me a lot. And, for me, that is where the battle begins.

Are you an atheist or agnostic?

Let me put it this way. I don’t believe in the existence of a supreme deity. No. But I believe very much that human beings are spiritual. We exist on certain levels outside our material being. And we can exhume and reinforce that consciousness. Human beings are very intelligent. It takes an intelligent person to invent God, to think of God, to say there is something outside of myself. I am sure of it. To me, that’s the beginning of the exploration of wisdom. There is nothing wrong with that, but what you find there, is what you create. Because gods are human creations. Bi eniyan o si, imole o lee wa (it’s human beings who create gods). The problem is when they create God in their image.  And very often that image is a wanton, killing image, killing for ritual purposes in pursuit of wealth, position, of power over others. Don’t let us forget that both Christianity and Islam enslaved this continent in the name of God, shaved the heads of our people, forced them to change their names, adopt new names, forced them to abandon their customs. They never said, Let’s look at this custom of yours. Let’s see what is good in it.  Let’s discuss it. No, they were so arrogant and ignorant to concede that this continent had anything of value. They still do that. Usually, it is by violence, conversion by violence. If you want to reach me, reach me through my mind, not through my throat.  Otherwise, there is nothing to discuss with you.

Professor Wole Soyinka

The last time you visited the Aso Rock Presidential Villa, you told some journalists after your close- door meeting with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu that you always give new tenants of the Villa one year to settle down before you offer constructive criticisms. Now, President Tinubu has just marked one year in office. I’m just wondering why you are keeping silent in the face of the myriad problems confronting Nigeria? 

First of all, understand that I don’t live on an alarm clock. And I hope nobody is so naive as to think that on the dot of one year I am going to speak. That’s number one. Number two, you asked that question nicely: Do I have anything to say and so on, which is the way it should be. I know that there are some people out there, who are waiting for Wole Soyinka to speak. Whatever he says, they are going to jump at him. If you read my Baiting Igbophobia, I narrate a conversation, which was transmitted to me, in which these people sent one of their marching orders to somebody that he should go and deal with me. The man said you know I don’t understand what Soyinka says. They told him, Who says you should understand? Any time he opens his mouth, jump in his throat. That’s the way they put it. I’m quoting them. And my response to that, of course, is that I have swallowed more toxic nonsense in my life, anybody who jumps in my throat I would swallow and excrete it in the rear end, and go back to my business normally!  So, they are there, salivating, waiting for Wole Soyinka to speak. After cutting my American Green Card, I did not announce it for several months, the same way I intend to keep quiet for now and not make any public statement. As far as I am concerned, they can go and commit suicide, wherever they are, or come and jump in my throat as they have been directed. I know those who are waiting. I want to disappoint them.

Why do you choose democracy over dictatorships? And what would you say to those who clamour for the military to return to power, or those who are celebrating military coups all over Africa now?

I hate to do this categorisation. There are at least two major levels of humanity. There are those, when I think of it, who are from Zone A, there are others who are from Zone B.  In Fela’s song, it is Zombie, but in my category, it is Zone B. It is the same thing— Follow-Follow people who just can’t think for themselves. Freedom is a habitation of the humanity of Zone A, those who understand freedom. But prison is the habitation of the humanity of Zone B. And this is a serious problem for philosophers, theologians, psychologists etc., etc. For one reason or the other, people in Zone B find their ease only under slave conditions. You see it every day. The relationships even in schools, between the bullies and the bullied, those who submit, who are very happy to be bullied as long as they are left in peace. Those are the inhabitants of Zone B, right from childhood. My take on this is also reinforced by history. We know that we have those who just wish to dominate. They cannot fulfil themselves except through domination. Both spiritual ideology and, if you like, secular ideology, are used as instruments to cow the rest of humanity and make them submissive to their own will. And I ask myself, What is it that gives these individuals the right, the privilege, to dominate the next person?  What is the need? When you look at ideology, the most progressive ideology, when you break it down, you find that you can again have a dichotomy. Among the followers of that ideology: the inhabitants of Zone A and Zone B, whether you are talking about Marxism, whether you are talking about African personality cult, whether you are talking about pan-Africanism, both real and quasi-ideology, you find that there is a division. Study any society. Study wars. What is happening between Russia and Ukraine today?  Yes, we know there is material involved: oil, gas. And we know, without any doubt, that there is a fear of others, competition between the various powers, whether you are talking about America or you are talking about China, there is this contest, the compulsion to be masters even of Zone A. They are not satisfied to belong in Zone A. No, no, no. They got to bring others under their domination. Look at the excessive force being used, for instance, by Israel against the Palestinians.  Yes, we know that there was provocation at the beginning, but for heaven’s sake what is going on right now is simply barbaric.  And it has to do with a desire, Oh, I see, you hurt us we are now going to show you we are the masters of Zone A and reduce you to nothingness, literally. Democracy of course frowns heavily on this kind of division. Democracy distinguishes between, let me say, power and authority. Authority is what is given to an individual, or a group to manage certain affairs on behalf of others. Full stop. Until we learn to recognise this difference, people will always submit themselves to punitive and domineering ideologies, using the word progressive loosely, hiding behind the inscription, progressivity vs reactionism.  We need to look at the educational process closely and see if sometimes it doesn’t contribute to people submitting themselves to the domination of others and the illusion that they are either pleasing the ideological god, always spiritual. And it is something which I have observed from a very early age.  I have learned to look at people and say, Ah, that is an inhabitant of Zone A, the other one, Zone B, and guard myself accordingly (laughs).

Professor Wole Soyinka

Talking about ideologies, the far right and extremists all over the world are working hard to annihilate other people, as you said. But what do you think is responsible for the resurgence of this anti-human behaviour? And what can liberal democrats like you do to defeat them?

It’s mobilisation. And also teach young people to understand that very often tyranny is not necessarily found on the side of the state. This tyrannical tendency actually exists very often among civilians. So, civilians become their own worst enemy. And it is very glamourous and simple to deal with the state, to say, Ah, because authority is behind the state, empowers it, therefore it’s like David and Goliath. At the same time, however, we got to be conscious of that within us, among ourselves, there are those who are more tyrannical, more brutal than the state. It’s a slow understanding for many people. They don’t want to think about it. Maybe they are afraid to think about it. But that is the reality.  I was talking not just about Nigeria. This is a phenomenon that happens all over the world.  You have the myrmidons (subordinates who execute orders unquestioningly). Again, it goes back to the slave mentality.  And the only answer to it is mobilisation of minds which understand this and the inculcation of that mode of thinking. So that you are aware all the time if somebody is trying to take your freedom away from you. It is not only the state that takes the freedom away from you. And this is something which is going on in this country.  This is a danger which we are all experiencing.

You asked the other question about the military. This is related. Look at the military regimes across the lower Sahelian region. I saw people carrying a soldier quite high and he was sitting on their heads.  And I said, Look at this. Here we go again.  We thought we had at least made strides in getting people to understand that it is always possible to sell themselves to that enemy called power. We had a little problem here, electoral problem, and the next thing: people were marching, carrying banners in front of the military in Abuja, asking the soldiers to take over again, after what we went through.  Sometimes I don’t understand. Maybe there is a slavery limpet gene in some people. Or maybe all of us are born with it and somehow some of us get rid of it quite early. I have no idea. But I think it is a phenomenon that requires continuing dialogue among philosophers, theologians, psychologists, Buddhists, the Orisha worshipers, the Zoroastrians and so on. Those who try to probe the human psyche, they are the only ones who can answer your question. I cannot explain it fully.

How do you relate all of that to the extremism in America right now?

That’s why Donald Trump succeeded in the first place. And that is why he is able to run again for second time.  Trump is not as clever as he thinks he is. But he did one thing. He studied and he understood the American psyche. And he knew the right chord to tweak in order to get them on his side, to get them to believe anything that he says. I don’t think the world has ever known such a consummate liar like Donald Trump. We have had one here also, but he is just a copycat beside   Donald Trump. If you want to find out what is going on, look at all the many lies of this fellow called Trump. So many lies. But I don’t want to go in that direction. Let’s just remark it and move on. And the one in Nigeria who is trying to copy Trump has studied only a minuscule section of the Nigerian psyche and he was able to tweak certain sentiments, certain aspects of our history. Again, I don’t want to talk about that. So, let’s move on. But Donald Trump is a menace, he is a danger to the world. I mean it. It is not just to America. He is a danger to the world.  One thing shocked me but it also enables me.  Let me go into this now. As I said, this is not just your interview. This is part of the Soyinka Memory Tank Project. This reminds me of the Green Card episode in which I could not believe  that there were people in this country — I should not have been surprised —  who actually made it their business  to come and comment acerbically on the decision of any citizen  to say, I don’t like what is happening over there. Therefore, I want to terminate my relationship with that place. To make that decision of mine your own business, is a reflection of your slave mentality.  There was one young man, a Nigerian, who even said God had ordained that that Trump would triumph.  Okay. That’s fine.  But at least that particular person didn’t have to attack me for cutting up my Green Card or saying I dared not do it.  Even though I have written about it in Green Cards, Green Gods, it is still something I sometime wake up and puzzle over.  Did it really happen? Did Nigeria, a free nation of free people with their history, with their supposed knowledge of what was happening elsewhere in the world, become so stupid they could not understand that even when Trump was campaigning, the killing, extra-judicial killing of blacks by the police shot up drastically, not even only by the police? And then I said, I don’t want to be a permanent resident of that place, and some Nigerians made it their business to abuse me for that? I cut up my Green Card on Thanksgiving Day in America, I was in Oakland, California. Thanksgiving was in November. Up till February of the following year, Nigerians were still saying I dared not cut it up! And it gave me enormous inner pleasure to say nothing. I said let them keep making slaves of themselves. They didn’t even know that in the meantime the IRS were taking their revenge as they decided to get their taxes. They said I owed close to $60,000. So, I went to the American Embassy in Nigeria. I said, Look at this wahala o. I have left your country. But now IRS says I owe this and that I must report. Then I said, Could you give me a B1 visa?  I had already cut up my Green Card. They had no problem: I got the visa. What was the problem with Nigerians? The country whose Green Card I tore didn’t have any problem. They gave me B1 visa to go and answer their query in the States. I went and came back—tax matter sorted. But those slaves were still abusing me.

Let me narrate another one. The incident in the plane which occupied some Nigerians for weeks, a trivial incident which happened because of my sitting in the wrong seat.  And then somebody came along. That’s my seat, he said. I said, Wait, call the hostess. And the hostess said, He’s right. I said, Sorry, and I left the seat for him. This trip from Lagos to Abuja became a trip from Abuja to America in some of the write-ups (laughs) I said, What is this?  Normally, I give up my seat to people in the plane if there is any need for it. Sometimes people come in, and they have been given separate seats. I look at them. I see them looking around anxiously. I say, Do you want to come and sit here?  And they say, Yes, thank you. The most ordinary, banal thing in the world. When it comes to Nigeria, the Zone B people want to climb to Zone A to show their power, to show their stupidity. It’s something that boggles the mind.

Professor Wole Soyinka

You recently talked about the antagonism of South Africans towards Nigerians.  You find it very concerning that Nigerians are persecuted in that place. Can you talk a little more about that?

You read Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. He made a very accurate observation, a kind of psychological quip, a paradox really, that people who are undergoing oppression tend to seek their validity by oppressing the other oppressed. Again, it is that movement to clamber from Zone B to Zone A, which ends up breeding power terrors who are dominating our environment. I could not believe what happened to me when I went to deliver lectures in honour of Nelson Mandela. I was travelling a lot at the time and there was no time to go to the South African Embassy in Nigeria for my visa. So, my hosts said, Don’t worry, your visa will be waiting on arrival. When I got to South Africa, to cut a long story short, they put me in a small room there. And said they had changed the laws.  I told them—the immigration and customs—that my hosts were waiting for me outside. Please, call them. Anyway, they put me in that room and they said they had to call Pretoria.  I took out my laptop and started working. I stayed there, for one hour, two hours, three hours, four hours.  While I was sitting there, a group of young Americans, scruffy lot, came without visas. They were given visas instantly. I saw them. I said, What is this? I have not come here for fun. I have come here to honour the universal hero. I was with two others:  Bill Gates and another person.  Finally, they said, Come in and also bring your luggage with you. I thought, At long last! He then they said, Sorry, the visa has been denied. You have to leave.  I said, Okay, thank you. I said, Just take me to the international section of this airport.  I said, Listen, I don’t want to stay here one second longer. The first flight that is available I am getting on it.  And when Graca Machel heard about this, I understand she just blew out and started making calls and eventually they came and got me. I had already packed my bag and moved to the international section. I calmed down a bit and then said, Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison. I came all the way to South Africa to honour him. I dedicated my Nobel Lecture to him. I’ve written a couple of poems in his honour. So, I am not going to turn my back on him now. No, I will not.  They made me deliver the lectures. I went to the third lecture, however, with my travelling bag. Straight from there to the airport. Then I said, You people have seen the last of me.  For about a year and a half I didn’t go to South Africa. I got some invitations but I refused to accept them. Now, I will tell you— and I am saying this now for the benefit of those South Africans who are behind this strange conduct.  Dennis Brutus was invited to Nigeria to come and deliver a lecture. And he was promised a visa on arrival.  It so happened that on the day that he arrived at Murtala Muhammed International Airport, I was in a meeting with some people at the airport and I saw this man. He was very short-sighted.  I said, Dennis is that you? He said, Who’s that? This is Wole. Wole Soyinka.  Oh, what are you doing here? I said, What do you mean: what are you doing here?  This is Nigeria, my country (laughs). I said, Why are you patrolling up and down like those Apartheid police? He said, I am being deported. Who is deporting you? I asked.  They said I didn’t have a visa. And I said, You are being deported from Nigeria! You Dennis Brutus being deported from Nigeria? Oya, oya, come. We went to the immigration officer.  I said, Don’t let it be heard outside that Dennis Brutus, the anti- apartheid crusader, the man who began the Olympic boycott, the great poet, who wrote Sirens, Knuckles and Boots, who wrote Stubborn Hope, who wrote A Simple Lust, is being deported from Nigeria. Don’t let it be heard. Just give the man his visa right now and apologise to him quietly and let him go.  So, they gave him his visa. That was how I ended my boycott of South Africa. After that incident, I just said, There are stupid people in the world. There are also very regular people in the world. And the next time I was invited I went to South Africa.  With Brutus incident, I was able to pay them back in a different way, it just settled the account.  After that horrible one, there was yet another incident. In fact, our ambassador to South Africa was travelling on the same plane. And we all arrived together. This time, of course, I had my visa.  And the immigration lady, young woman, said that my visa had expired.  The visa which I got just two weeks ago had expired? It has not, I assured her. She said, What I am looking at here has expired.  I said, Let me take a look. She said, No, no, no.  Come with me.  So, all of us went to my familiar station, the immigration room. I think it was the ambassador or the third person who is a lawyer who said, Can I have a look? The lady was hesitant. The man said, Look properly, this is not one, this is four. She snatched the passport from him.  I said, It is one. And we still went to that place.  By the time we got there she had begun, I think, to wobble. We got to the office. The officer there said, Look, look, look, this is four. He was very courteous.  So, we all trooped out again. Desmond Tutu was so furious when he heard about the episode, I remember. And he delivered a withering rebuke in his speech about it. Listen, South Africa: If Nigerians misbehave, subject them to the laws. Full stop. There is nobody stopping you. Somebody steals or kills or kidnaps, deal with the person under the law. But this mob action against Nigerians, this hunting for Nigerians, is totally unacceptable.

What’s your take on the misuse of social media in Nigeria and the world?

I am going to repeat just what I said in Cairo, which led, incidentally, to my ‘’throat being jumped.’’ Every society has its lunatic fringe. Let’s begin with that. I have studied and compared, out of curiosity, the use of social media by Eastern European countries, India, Ethiopia and several other countries. There has been some scientific study which confirms my study: the most noxious abusers of social media are Nigerians. I said it in Cairo. I repeat it here. It is grounded on solid study and we have to find a way of rescuing social media from the trolls. This is a democratic instrument. And I know the role some of us played in getting us to this stage of democratising Nigeria. I stay off social media, but somebody sends me links from time to time, so I can’t stay off it entirely. After the Cairo event, a link from a platform was sent to me. It said, Wole Soyinka went to Cairo and began abusing social media because social media is now criticising him. That is what it feels like. It is only when he is being criticised that he now sees that social media is not good and so on. This ignorant character is unaware that ten years back I made a statement that if there is a third world war, it will be as a result of the misuse of social media. And abuser will prove to be a Nigerian. It is so self-evident. I wonder how anybody can argue about it. Because of the fiction that goes on, on social media, I just stay out of it. The late Pius Adesanmi was one of the finest, most intelligent users of social media. Unfortunately, some idiots dominate the medium now. Social media has made itself the tool for the perpetuation of what we all suffered under Sani Abacha. Regurgitating the vile propaganda put out by that psychopath, using Abiola Ogundokun’s Conscience International, to smear and destroy those who opposed his regime.

What do you consider your greatest achievement? 

Difficult question. That’s a tough one, since I don’t really think in terms of ‘’achievement.’’ Maybe simply approaching 90 in functional, albeit fairly ‘’panel beaten’’ condition, both mentally and physically.