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He is
Prof. Chinua Achebe
Prof.Wole Soyinka
Professor
Michael Mbabuike Nigerian Linguist and Poet, Michael Mbabuike is Professor and Chair of the Humanities Department/Africana Studies, Hostos Community college of the City University of New York. After obtaining a B.A [Honors] from the Professor
Okey
Ndibe
Okey Ndibe is an associate Professor of Literature at Simon’s Rock of Bard College in Great
Barrington, MA, Omoyele Sowore A former student leader
who survived torture under the Abacha regime,
Omoyele Sowore is a
pro democracy activist, and is widely considered his generation’s most respected and outspoken investigative journalist.
THE INTERVIEW Sir, in a historic vote,
Prof. Wole Soyinka
I believe it serves as an impetus for PRONACO to accelerate the tempo
of presenting a people's constitution to the nation, and a lesson to all sit-tight aspirants on the African
continent! ON: Nigerian leaders seem to have an
obsession with self-perpetuation. This was the case with Gowon, Babangida,
Abacha—and now, Obasanjo. What do you think accounts for
this fascination, and what strategies must Nigerians adopt to combat it? This situation, of course, is not peculiar
to Nigerians; but I suppose we are very
Part of the frustration of Nigerians, in
addition to the lack of fulfillment in every facet, is a deep-seated sense of hurt about the quality of leadership
in MM: Are you advising us to be like Ogun--the great creator and destroyer? I
mean, the winner is always right, as the saying goes; but how are the people of It is a multi pronged approach, I agree,
and we are already operating now. We are challenging, not only the present system, but the past. I’m talking about
the work of the on-going National Conference. Many people who thought the process through will understand why the
present regime was so desperate to stop that conference. Because it goes beyond merely providing the constitution,
offering an alternative constitution to the people; the methodology dictates that it is time to restore sovereignty
to the people. This is why Obasanjo and his government were so scared of the conference.
They threatened at the beginning that we would be charged with treason; the police breathed fire, and said they
would disrupt the gathering. We said no: sovereignty lies with the people, and the people have not yet enjoyed
that sovereignty; they have not been allowed to express their sovereign will for so many decades. And as long as
we are operating a constitution bequeathed by the military—even if it is the most perfect constitution in the world—the
people must still have a voice and say, we’ve examined this constitution, and endorse it, in toto. But the people must have a chance to debate, before making
it their choice. And now Obasanjo takes that constitution, quickly summons his own confab
for political tinkering and gerrymandering, and sends Mr. Mantu round to present it. Now Nigerians are seeing the hollowness, the ludicrousness of this exercise,
and they are comparing it to what is going on right now at Shangisha, in OS: I am more interested in the third
stage, because I have experienced the last two stages you mentioned. Many in my generation are tired and frustrated
with the idea of speaking to the press, marching in protest only to get shot at and killed. I want to ask directly
about the 3rd stage engagement. At what point
do you think people should start considering a higher level of resistance, for example, armed struggle; considering
that all these characters you described are not only brutal, but wicked, and have no regard for life and the rights of Nigerians to organize peacefully? I have been issuing very loud warnings
to the police, telling them not to allow themselves to be used. Nigerians have experienced far too much brutality
at the hands of the military and the police, as well as the secret services—especially under Abacha. I think the stage of a critical mass is very close to
us. And if, under what is supposed to be a democratic dispensation, the police turn out to be instruments for the
furtherance of state terror, that third stage may be reached sooner than many people imagine. It is not I who will
advocate it; I can only warn that I see the signs. And I can see signs of what you just said. I know I understand
this, and people are saying it. There is a level of frustration. It is because we don’t want things to reach that
stage that we keep shouting these warnings: the military and police -- do not allow yourselves to be used in instituting
terror, because if the third stage is reached, you will have to answer for your crimes against the people. One is fervently hoping that that
ultimate stage will not be reached. But all I can do is scream warnings, and also engage in the mobilization of
people for popular protests. MM: Prof, in the third stage engagement,
the winners are, supposedly, in the right. In other words, people do everything in their power not to become the
loser, because ultimately the winner is right. You have subscribed to that theory before in your writings. That the winner is right? MM: Yes. No, absolutely not; not at all… The winner
seizes power, yes; but it doesn’t mean that the winner is necessarily right! I don’t subscribe to that, at all.
If I may just say this; this warning is being demonstrated in what is happening in the Delta region, the oil region.
And the intransigence has been partly fuelled by the demonstration of the present regime to stay in power through
might and through fraud. And so the militants in that area are saying: alright, we’ll have to speak the language
of force. They don’t want the continuation of the present regime, because it will only carry on the policies of
the past. The Delta region has seen, over the last few years, that their lot has never improved, has not become
better, at all. And so why should they now subscribe to this self-perpetuation that guarantees their continuing
impoverishment? ON: We have seen that most Nigerians
are opposed to any plot to elongate the term of the president. However, a substantial number are worried about
who comes next. Some think it might be Babangida, a terrible, terrible, prospect, indeed. Some think it might be Atiku or Marwa; neither of them, an attractive choice. What kind of Well, I’m very glad that you stressed the
fact of what, and not who comes next. Each time we want to get rid of a nasty at the top, people always say, yes; but who do you have to replace him? That question I never take at all,
because we know that there are an abundance of people. Even the party I inaugurated -- when we started working
on this party about two years ago—was actually inaugurated in We have attached to the constitution now
what is, in effect, a people’s charter; the minimum that every citizen has a right to expect from the state, from
the collectivity. And this we want to be part of the constitution, so that individuals and groups can actually
push for these rights on the strength of the documents, the protocols that we plan to hold the nation together.
I am not so romantic as to think that overnight, we are going to have a transformed society in which suddenly,
services are available for the disabled. But
this is the goal, and anyone who is not working towards the attainment of these goals, the people have a right
to remove from office. OS: There is another question regarding
the political party issue--why can’t the activists have one single political movement in which there is a Wole Soyinka, Femi Falana, Gani Fawehinmi, and all the “big names” in the movement? There does not seem to be unity in the movement. How
would you respond to that? Well, at one time, we were driven apart
by ideological rigidities; but I think a lot of that is in the past now. I don’t know if you listened to Gani’s statement when Beko died? He said: “I don’t care about the past; all I know
is that we must all come together.” It is a critical moment for all of us. I have sent word to him to say -- Gani, stand by; we have work to do! We are
reaching out in many directions. I think we’re going to see a change between now and the next elections. Recent reports in Nigerian Newspapers suggest that you
may be interested in running for the presidency. What role can Nigerians play to make this a reality? Nigerians will have to learn that working with others to
create a new, progressive, platform as an alternative to existing choices is not the same as nursing
political ambition. In other parts of I am confident, I am pretty confident!
He may hope to turn himself into another Mugabe; however, Sir; how do you respond to the phenomenon of "godfatherism"
in Nigerian politics? The greatest disservice President Obasanjo has done to the
nation is to have promoted the cult of godfatherism, its illegalities, its naked violence, and its corruption. ON: Your new book, You
Must Set Forth At Dawn has just come out. You are not only a writer, but an activist,
an agent provocateur…something of a conscience of the nation. How do you reconcile such diverse demands? I don’t know about
Prof. Wole Soyinka at Princeton University Commencement robed for an honorary degree
(2005)
Okay, from time to time I resent it very
strongly. Let’s say I’m in the midst of, or planning a particular creative project. I’ve become internally committed
to it, and something external impinges—like, what you’ve just mentioned; the politics of one’s existence—and of such urgency, that I have to abandon
my project. And then there come strong resentment: Oh my God, not again, not again. When will I be able to plan
my life according to my immediate moods, and so on? But it’s only in terms of those periods that there is resentment.
ON: You’ve just published a political
memoir that spans your many years of active engagement in the political life of Laughs…I
first and foremost apologize to everyone for being foolish enough to say that I would not write my biography beyond
the age of eleven. It was very presumptuous of me, because I underestimated the amount of provocation I would receive
later in life. But ideally, ideally, I think one really should not go beyond the age of innocence in writing one’s
autobiography. And the age of innocence ends at about eleven. After that, you’re no longer spontaneous. A child
is a spontaneous being; that is why that period in one’s life is the most truthful. At a later age, you begin
to hedge a little bit, create gaps-- deliberate ones, which could even be accounted as lies--on account of other
people, or simply because you think the actions involved in that period are not yet over. So whilst you don’t set
out to be dishonest in writing a book about adult life, you cannot be totally truthful—because you’re hiding something;
you have to. I wrote During the weeks of waiting—I mean, I came
out really not expecting to stay longer than a week, and I stayed for weeks—during the weeks of waiting, I projected
what we might have to do to force Babangida out of office, and I realized that this was not going to be child’s play. I had envisaged a very
serious action by the people. So I thought, as I sat down twiddling my fingers for two weeks, that I had better
reconcile myself to using the two weeks to set down something about my past, if only for the coming generations
to understand what is sometimes required of one in times of political crisis. That was the real motivation for
O.N: But what triggered your writing of You Must Set Forth At Dawn?
In the first instance, I was fed up with
people—you know the kind of critics I am
Advertise here
So experiences like that began to make
me feel, well…hadn’t I better start setting certain things down? But when I actually conceived the writing was
during the period of Abacha’s
regime—and the fight involved in getting him out struck me as being likely to be even more deadly than what was
planned for the ousting of Babangida.
So I said to myself: well, may be it’s time again to start putting something down. The occasion again was the uncertainty
about the future—it was a time, as you know, when I was wearing all kinds of disguises, because I was being hunted
all over the world, and I wasn’t about to give up. And to tell you the truth, when I look back on how repetitive
life had become, it seemed to me that I should write these things down in a book for the young generation, so that
they would be able to see the Sisyphean task one finds himself burdened with; may be they’d find some other means
of contesting the unacceptable impositions of life. So the motivation was to talk to the younger generation; but
of course, by the time you start writing, it becomes a work on its own, and goes beyond that. That was the reason
for the memoirs. ON:
You mention the repetitive pattern of life; one pattern for you seems to take on
life as an exile. You were jailed by Yakubu Gowon, and
subsequently went on exile. Ibrahim
Babangida exiled you. Abacha did the same, and now you are on
some form of exile. President Olusegun
Obasanjo’s government has decided
that your voice must be discounted, if not silenced, on account of what a government spokesman described as your
godlessness. How does it feel to be a citizen of a nation where those in power feel compelled to physically remove
you from the national space or to contrive to remove your voice from the national discourse? I have become reconciled to the fact that
there will always be those who don’t want to hear bad news—that is, bad news for them. They don’t understand that
sometimes what they consider bad news for them is really good news—because it means a call to self-examination
vis-à-vis their conduct towards the people they’re supposed to rule over. It’s a call to their conscience,
a call to re-think. But unfortunately, power ever loves only its own, and, therefore, no contrary voices. So I
have accepted that as part of the occupational hazard one has to confront. What we are going through right now
is perhaps one of the saddest chapters of my entire political career. To find, at the head of government, someone
who has run that country as a dictator, unchallenged!
And then who virtually had one foot over the edge of extinction—eventually pulled back by the hair thanks to the
efforts of people like you and me, the international community, and the internal struggle--in other words, a man
who has tasted the other side of life. He comes out, and is put back in control
of that same space, that same real estate. Instead of just staying one term—in fact, his second term was already
too long--instead of saying, okay, may be I can now put into structures, actualize, and realize those ideals I
thought of in my earlier coming, and then take a bow and go out, he’s planning to subvert the constitution, and
doing so in the crudest way possible. This is through bribery, intimidation, blackmail, the misuse of state agencies,
sending the SSS (State Security
Service) to break up opposition meetings in halls that have been paid for by people, tear gassing, right, left,
and center, the opposition either in OS:
I’d like to ask—in view of a statement you made recently, that you’re worried about
the next generation in terms of activism; are you going to set up a foundation that can sustain some of your legacies
in the struggle so that young people may find in you a source of support and inspiration? First of all, I have a foundation;
Prof. Wole Soyinka at Bard College
Hopefully, how one has responded to events—and
this includes the political party that was set up, which I was informed a few days ago had been registered; its
registration saved us a lot of litigation, because we were going to go to court to fight this all the way. The
principle of the right to associate culturally, socially, politically is for me so fundamental to social existence
that I cannot accept the notion of an arbitrary body deciding whether I am qualified to set up a political party
or not. But it looks as if we’ve been registered. That party will be there for frustrated young people, idealistic
young people—and also older people; I’m not discriminating. So young people who say we have no political platform
with which we can associate—all right, there’s a fresh one which can be owned by the young generation. That’s the
whole purpose of my setting up the party. MM:
What is your advice to young African writers? What should be their mission? First of all, I always say to them when
I’m asked that question; write, just write. Just write, and prepare a basket to receive your rejection slips. Receive
your rejection slips and write again. And write again. That’s the first thing. The second one is truthfulness.
A number of our writers, I’m afraid, wasted a lot of their talent in writing, their genuine talent and creative
authenticity, by being too ideologically driven. That does not mean one should not have an ideology in writing. One
should allow, however, that ideology to percolate through the manipulation of character and so on and so forth—not
to begin with the ideology and then you want to weave a work of fiction around it. I believe that’s the wrong way
to go about it, because then you’re driven by something external to your real, genuine, creative impulse. But if
you’re guided, if you’ve already internalized a political ideology, it would percolate through what you write.
A number of second generation writers spend too much time trying to ideologize their writings, and then end up writing propaganda. And they are capable of much better. So be
very truthful to your impulse; don’t allow exterior dictates to control the direction of your creative impulse. MM:
In Dance of the Forest,
Black history is a tragic cycle of errors; but you do not appear to indict, accuse,
suggest or recommend punishment for white complicity. You seem to be very hard on the Black characters. Why so? This was 1960, and we were about to obtain
our independence. For me, that moment was a moment of very deep and honest introspection. There comes a moment
when the child matures, and if the child keeps looking back and saying, “My teacher did this, my father did this;
therefore, I cannot lift a foot until I have screamed loud and long,” well, that’s one way of doing it. On the
other hand I can say --to hell with these people who tried to mess up my life; I now want to seize hold of my life.
And for that, you begin with introspection, with self-criticism, analyzing just where you have come from. When
you’ve gone over that phase, when you have really established yourself, you’re strong enough now to tell the others
where to go. After Dance of the Forest, both my
political writings and some fictional work obviously deal with the role of the white man in our affairs. The destruction of the organic system of
productivity in our society is something which I have stressed over and over again—also pointing a finger at who
destroyed it. Whether you talk about the slave trade or you talk about the colonial experience, the intervention
in our proper development, our own self-direction; whether you talk about the OS: In view of that, how is it that
you are not an arrow head of the reparations movement? But you’re so wrong. I’m not the arrowhead
of the movement, but I have a very substantive role in that. In fact, I have been taken up by all kinds of outside
commentators who in fact accuse me of trying to shift the responsibility for the parlous condition of When a woman is raped, one of the things
she demands is that the rapist first admits the crime. For that rapist to continue denying the crime is itself
a second rape. That is the way women explain it. And the same thing is true for us. In fact, I have gone so far
as to propose that what we are looking for is not monetary reparation, although that certainly figures into the
equation; whether through debt forgiveness or whatever. But the return of all the looted African treasures would
be a beginning towards an acknowledgement of a historic guilt of immeasurable magnitude. MM: I would like to follow up on the
last question. In a lecture you gave at Harvard in 1997, you argued for reparation for African Americans as well
as for any group robbed of its humanity. How do you respond to the African American economist, Thomas Sowell, who
contended that the relative economic backwardness of African Americans is significantly attributed to the backwardness
of the family structure? If he is saying that the family structure
was weakened, in fact destroyed, by the experience of slavery, which reduced, in fact, virtually rubbished, the
authority of the parental sector of the family—there, I agree. We saw the same thing happen in MM: You have been accused of Godlessness... Oh yes! MM: And have you now become spiritual?
The answer to that is yes…I think
Prof. Wole Soyinka and Beko Kuti
OS: Another important question for my
generation is the issue of confraternities for which you’ve had a fair share of beating from the religious right
as well as secular groups, including the government. What is your take on what is happening on Nigerian university
campuses today? Do you feel you have done enough to bring an end to the mindless blood-thirstiness on our campuses,
and the gangsters who are operating these cults? A similar issue is being raised here in
the Now those ones referring to themselves
as fraternities today on our campuses are common criminals. They are criminals who are backed by political godfathers
and academic godfathers. I have cited the example of the vice chancellor of a university who employed the services
of these cults. They became his security outfit. You had to go through them in order to reach the VC.
He gave them cars, gave them money. The guilt, the crime really, is a crime of society. This is what I have been
stressing to people. When I speak about this issue, even when I made a documentary, not long ago, people think
erroneously that I am trying to exonerate myself, because I started the first fraternity in I have a few prescriptions. The first thing
is that you stop referring to members of these fraternities as students. When they commit a crime, they are criminals,
and should be rightly treated as such and jailed. Those who kill, torture, or throw acid on one another over females
and similarly inane rivalries should be treated like rapists and arsonists. As long as we keep calling these reprobates
members of fraternities, we are glorifying their existence. No! So many of them are, in actuality, armed robbers;
they associate with robber barons and receive stolen goods. During my research, just to find who was behind these
characters, we made a lot of unbelievable discoveries. There are highly placed public and society figures, including
police commissioners and military officers who protect their children when they commit obvious criminal offences! ON: Allow me to ask this question since
we are talking tangentially about our educational system; it seems, in the view of many, that the Nigerian university
educational system has collapsed. There used to be a time when people like you and Chinua Achebe and other outstanding scholars happily taught in Nigerian universities. I refer to that period
as our renaissance moment. But during the Babangida and Abacha
regimes, there was a flight of intellectuals out of the country. Oh, the flight began even before Babangida’s time... ON:
What then is your view of the state of education in The problem has to do with power versus
intellect. Those who are obsessed with power cannot stand intellect. From Gowon’s time, the universities have been under siege; a situation that has severely escalated with every
dictatorial regime. The suspicion, the hatred of intellectualism has deepened, becoming almost a credo for successive
governments. Obasanjo—during
his first coming—you remember his assault on the universities? It’s become a habit with military administrations.
Unfortunately, the university dons played into the hands of power. People who should demonstrate and behave with
professional pride, actually went a-begging: “This is my CV sir; please sir, I want to be on this commission, I
want to be in this parastatal...”
Then, of course, the choice of vice chancellors…oh my God. One vice chancellor earned the name of “gate keeper”
to a politician, a political leader in The thing is what can we do to restore
the integrity of campuses? The first thing is this: we have too many university campuses at the moment. The teaching
capacity has been spread so thin that the quality of teaching has declined tremendously. Then there is poverty
to be dealt with. Universities have been deliberately impoverished. Even when I taught in the Whether one is talking about the disciplines
of the humanities, medicine, or engineering in We need a drastic re-start. I insist that
our universities should be closed down for a minimum of one year, so that we can go back to the drawing board.
People may think this a drastic measure and, perhaps, excessive—but I insist that you can’t use band aid to cover
cancer. This period has to be very well planned, because you can’t just throw students out on the streets. But
I believe that the population of Nigerian students can easily be absorbed and employed -- with very good planning
-- for a year in national service, by various arms; not just the state, but the private sector. They may be sent
out to earn a responsible living as part of their national service, so that they, in fact, perform their national
service in that year. At the same time, a congregation of Nigerian universities should be actively involved in
fund raising as well as forming committees to harmonize courses, and also study the various campuses to see which
ones are actually functioning at the university level, and not merely as higher institutions. And this doesn’t
apply to private universities, by the way. The private universities—I haven’t visited them, though I understand
they’re pretty good—this doesn’t affect them. And this shouldn’t affect those institutions
that feel that they’re all right. However, those institutions who accept that they do have a real problem in reestablishing
educational standards, I think, should join this exercise voluntarily. And that’s another thing, by the way. When
I say that these universities should take a year off, I’m not advocating that the government should close down
universities. I don’t understand why people should think this, at all. What I am asking of the university communities
is to have the autonomy to re-examine themselves, and hopefully come to the conclusion I reached many years ago:
that unless they voluntarily close themselves down and institute a collective congregation—including staff, students,
town and gown, all the various facets--I don’t think any achievements can be made. OS: You rightly mentioned that people
are criticizing your suggestion to close down certain universities. People believe that the Obasanjo regime, for example, might actually be thrilled for
this to happen. Without the presence of university students, public officials can plan to embezzle as much money
as is possible. This is why people argue for the closing down of Aso Rock, before anything else, and then putting someone there who is responsive to your suggestion.
If the universities close down now--as you know, the vice chancellors are appendages of the federal and state governments--this
will prevent any autonomy of the universities. You know, professor, that these vice chancellors are marionettes
of people in power. Can you address this contradiction? WS:
It is not a contradiction. You’re saying that if students are away from the campuses, the people in government
would be free to be as corrupt as they want. But many of the students have been co-opted, in any case; has corruption
gone down, has the malfeasance of the regime diminished? Isn’t the student union of the nation, at the moment,
calling for the extension of Obasanjo’s
stay? Many of the students have been co-opted; they have lost direction. They have failed to understand what the
mission of students should be. Some of them, in fact, don’t even understand what student culture is all about.
You might have read in the papers that I became so mad at a group of them, because they had a grievance and came
and disrupted Beko’s funeral.
It was such a mannerless and
crude thing that I didn’t expect from students! But you see; they haven’t had the chance to absorb a positive student
culture. Now, left to me, I agree with you—I’d close
down Aso Rock tomorrow. I have
been trying to close down Aso
Rock for many years. Who is going to object to that? I don’t. So if you have a means of doing that, I’m with you
all the way. But in the meantime, what do we do? We have to leave Aso Rock to try and mend itself as best as it can. We in civil society should try and urge civil society
of its funk. There’s a serious problem in civil society; sometimes civil society is its own worst enemy. So we’ve
got to tackle all these with both hands and both feet, preferably together; but if you can’t do it all at once,
then do it one by one! MM: Back to the theme and theories of
the god of Ogun and Ogunnism—the one that destroys and rebuilds--how
do we connect this with what is happening today in | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
