Editor, Politics/Features, EMEKA ALEX DURU, takes a look at some political activities of Professor WOLE SOYINKA who clocks 80 today.
Wole Soyinka
It is not uncommon for casual admirers of Professor Akinwande Oluwole (Wole) Soyinka to easily limit him with his great records in literature and human rights activism. This, of course, is not without cause. By his uncommon feat of being the first African Nobel Laureate in Literature, Soyinka has firmly stamped his image in the consciousness of many. He is also known to have remained a virulent critic of successive tyrannical regimes in the land. Of course, in doing so, he had often run into trouble in the hands of past military administrations, at times, ending up in detention.
But aside these giant strides, Soyinka has also been involved in the nation’s political development and engineering. Four years ago, precisely at his 76th birthday, for instance, the accomplished playwright, in league with like minds, had unfolded a political party, Democratic Front for a Peoples Federation (DFPF), which he said was intended to offer hope to the hopeless. At the convention of the party ahead of the 2011 general elections, Soyinka was elected unopposed as the national chairman. He was, however, quick to add that he would not run for office, when asked about the possibility.
According to him, DFPF would be a political party that aims to reduce corruption and improve conditions in health and education.
“The party is strictly for those who have nowhere to lay their heads, those who have discovered that they are in the wrong political party, progressives in political parties including those in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who have the zest for positive change.
“I wish to emphasise that function, and it is clearly meant both as a warning and exhortation. Above all, the DFPF is a party for frustrated youth and uncomfortable ideas.
“The DFPF for now is disinterested in the overall national scene. But after taking control in one state, one council, one ward, would begin to reach out through example to others, gradually evolving a civic rule that governs and performs through mutual collaboration,” he said.
He described conditions in Nigeria as a living nightmare, adding that he had detected a will to change the system among younger people.
Curiously, Soyinka said he would not give blanket exoneration to the youth in the land, adding that some of them are more corrupt than the most corrupt military or politicians.
He stressed, however, that among them could be found idealistic, committed young people of integrity who could be moulded for a better Nigeria.
The party, incidentally, did not record much impact in the 2011 general elections. But the idea behind it was celebrated by many who saw it as, perhaps, the first conscious attempt at founding a political party on defined ideological conviction in the country’s recent history.
Dr. Jamiu Oluwatoki, Senior Lecturer in Department of History and International Studies, Lagos State University (LASU), describes Soyinka’s involvement in politics as a mixed situation that had come with some measures of effectiveness and ineffectiveness.
He said: “It is a mixed situation. He has been effective as an agent provocateur and social commentator. But in many instances, he appears partisan and so becomes ineffective.”
Sadiq Haruna, a human rights activist, agrees that the professor may not have hit it in terms of success at the ballots, but has succeeded in setting standards for political participation.
“I was not a member of his party. But I saw it in the mould of Gani Fawehinmi’s National Conscience Party (NCP) or the Second Republic Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) facilitated by the late Aminu Kano. Those were parties that had identifiable ideology. They were the real progressives that actually had the good of the people at heart and not the present buccaneers that mouth progressivism in the day while stealthily appropriating the people’s patrimony at night,” said Haruna, in an encounter with TheNiche.
Analysts explain his quest for a just and egalitarian society as accounting for his rough deals with past military administrations in the land.
They recall that his avowed antagonism to and abhorrence for military tyranny and domination brought him into collision with the military authorities during the Nigerian civil war of 1967 to 1970 and in the dark days of the Sani Abacha regime when he had to leave on voluntary exile. His perceived offence against the administration was considered so weighty that Abacha proclaimed a death sentence on him “in absentia”.
Before then, he had, twice, seen the four walls of prison for his involvement in the politics of the nation. In 1965, during the then Western Region election crisis, he was detained on a charge that he had substituted his own tape for the one supposed to be broadcast by the late Samuel Akintola, the then Premier of Western Region.
In 1967, General Yakubu Gowon’s Federal Military Government detained him for allegedly constituting himself into a great security risk by contravening the Armed Forces and Police Special Powers Decree No. 24 of 1967. He was then accused of holding meeting with General Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu, Head of State of the emerging Biafran Republic, in what later turned out to be an effort to avert the impending civil war. For that daring effort, Soyinka was thrown into the gulag for 22 months.
Since the onset of the present dispensation, he has remained vocal against policies of the government that are considered against the interest of the people.
Soyinka who was born on July 13, 1934, is 80 today.