Soyinka Celebrated 75th Birthday

Professor Wole Soyinka’s 75th birthday is marked in Lagos with a rousing lecture by Dr. Olatunji Dare, accomplished columnist and journalism teacher

The celebration of Professor Wole Soyinka’s birthday has become an annual ritual, but one without a hollowness to it. Soyinka, Africa’s first Nobel laureate in Literature, is a national treasure. It is for this reason that the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism, WSCIJ, decided not only to celebrate him but also organised a lecture on 13 July in commemoration of his 75th birthday in Lagos.

The lecture, titled: Narrating The Nigerian Story: The Challenge For Journalism, was delivered by erudite scholar and journalist, Dr. Olatunji Dare of Bradley University, Preoria, Illinois, USA.

Dare began his lecture by showering encomiums on the literary icon. He described Soyinka as a constant presence in our national life. “No person has told the Nigerian story more eloquently, more copiously, more arrestingly than Wole Soyinka,” Dare said.

In his well-researched lecture, he not only brought the national question to the fore, but also interrogated the role of the media in Nigeria’s quest for nationhood. He questioned Nigeria’s existence as a nation. “Nigeria began as an idea in the head and mind of the British imperialist, Fredrick Lugard. He actualised the idea in 1914 and since then, Nigeria has been a picture we carry in our heads,” the scholar lamented.

Dare also believes that not only is Nigeria a work in progress, it is a promise and a possibility. According to him, though Nigeria exists in the present, it is a future country. “It (Nigeria) is inhabited by a patchwork of nationalities corralled into place by British imperialist fiat. Nobody knows its actual geographical boundaries,” Dare submitted.