Professor Wole Soyinka, the renowned Nobel Laureate will be marking his 88th years old birthday today. He was born on 13 July, 1933 in Abeokuta. He clears the air about the irregularities surrounding his 1969 civil war detention and what he lost during the period.
In a 1969 interview which had been recently sighted by Africa Today News, New York, he had narrated what he lost when the Gowon regime detained him for two years.
He said he had got himself involved in the political process, but he was not a politician. He had also added he was amazed that he was released, but he knew that one day it would happen.
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On what he lost during the detention, he narrated: “I lost time, so many things damaged. So many creative possibilities have been retarded. My immediate business is to put things right.”
In 1966 there were two military coups (Nzeogwu’s and the revenge one) and Nigeria appeared to be heading for a civil war after Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu declared south-east Nigeria to be the independent Republic of Biafra. In 1967, Soyinka attempted to negotiate a truce between the belligerent sides. However, the Yakubu Gowon regime thought he was trying to take sides with Ojukwu and his men. Gowon slammed Soyinka in the slammer for two years.
He was released in 1969 when the civil war ended. Apart from putting his detention experience in a book, The Man Died: Prison Notes, he granted the interview above, retrieved from YouTube.
In another report, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has described the attack on St. Francis Catholic Church, Owo, Ondo State, where many worshippers were killed, as vendetta killing which was meant to send a message to the entire people of South-West.
Soyinka made his view known while paying a condolence visit to Gov. Oluwarotimi Akeredolu over the terror attack last Sunday.
He described the attack as a message and said it was targeted at the governor who has been showing leadership in terms of the internal liberation of his people.
“He (governor) was targeted and there is no question about that.
“It was not an accident and it passed a massage to the rest of us. That is why I’m here. I want the governor to know that we have received the message.
“We understand it and we came to sympathise with him that he was selected as a medium of that message,“ Soyinka said.