WOLE Soyinka, WS. Our own WS as distinct from the British WS, William Shakespeare, was 90 on July 13, 2024. As a 31-year-old, he was charged with one of the most audacious seizures of a radio station. On October 15, 1965, a bearded six footer, clutching a beretta pistol had stealthily stolen into the studios of the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation, NBC, Ibadan. He seized the taped recording of a scheduled 7.14pm broadcast by then Premier of the old Western Region, Chief Samuel Ladoke Akintola, and substituted it with his own tape.
Soyinka was brought before Justice Kayode Esho charged with robbing the radio station. In court, one is required to ‘say the truth, nothing but the truth’; Soyinka’s truth was that he was far away in Enugu, 528.1 kilometres away when the robbery occurred. A main prosecution witness, Professor Axworthy, told the court that he had been at the same meeting with Soyinka two hours before the robbery and he was clean-shaven. So the crux of the matter was how could a clean-shaven man have grown beards within two hours? He was therefore discharged and acquitted.
Fifty-five years later, a team of journalists from TheNEWS led by its Director, Kunle Ajibade, sat Soyinka down, and asked him to come clean on the matter. It was in 2020 and Soyinka was turning 86. A pointed question was: “How did you get into the studio?” Soyinka responded: “Look, I was acquitted and you are talking as if I was the culprit. I was acquitted. I stood trial and I was acquitted. Why do you keep saying you, you, you? What’s your problem?”
Four years later, at 90, while answering questions from children on his life experiences, a similar question popped up. Soyinka this time said: “I never broke into a radio station, but sneaked in. The radio station was holding on to something that belonged to the people, and I decided to retrieve it.”
So, is this the final truth? On the day of the Nobel Laureate’s 90th birthday, the Wole Soyinka Media Centre founded by the super investigative journalist, Dapo Olorunyomi, held a symposium in his honour. The title was ‘The Death of Truth?’ It examined: ‘Realism, literature and journalism in an age of disinformation’. But can the truth really die or is it a phoenix which is imbued with immortality?
Appropriately, Emeritus Professor Biodun Jeyifo, BJ, gave the Keynote Address. He had, since youth, been relentlessly in pursuit of the truth. This means BJ knows what many may not know: the Truth is not dead, it is alive!
In 2005, BJ published The Truthful Lie: Essays in a sociology of African Drama. So can lie be truthful? I had tried to explore this in my January 21, 2019 column titled: “The truth as a Lie.”
One of the panellists at the symposium was the genius, Odia Ofeimum, a book industry who has authored over 40 books. His first poetry collection, titled: ‘The Poet Lied’, set off a fire storm in the Nigeria literary world. One of his books in cultural politics is: Impossible Death of the African Author. So, with his previous interrogation of lies, truth and death, he was equipped to answer the theme of the symposium: ‘The Death of Truth?’
Incidentally, in December, 2018, I walked into a telephone conversation between Ajibade and Odia. As I entered his house, the latter asked me the difference between the truth and what is factual. I had answered: “The truth can be subjective, but what is factual is objective and verifiable.” At the symposium, it was Ajibade who made an authoritative introduction of BJ. Amongst the truths he recalled was that the Academic Staff Union of Universities, ASUU, with BJ as founding President was able to serve its members more effectively due to “the democratic nature of its decision-making and the honesty and total commitment of its leaders.”
So, what happened to the truth? BJ told the allegorical story: “In a period of truce from war between Truth and Falsehood when there was even hope that there could be an armistice between them and each could live in and with the ambiguity that clothes them both most of the time, Falsehood invited Truth to take a dip in a shallow well with him. She accepted and they both jumped naked into the well. But no sooner had Truth settled down into what she thought would be a pleasant swim did Falsehood run away with the dress of Truth in which he then clothed himself. In vain did Truth plead and plead for her dress to be returned, thinking that Falsehood was playing a prank that he would soon tire of. But when it finally dawned on her that this was no prank and Falsehood would never return her dress, she came out of the well in her nakedness. What she experienced that day has persisted to this day: as soon as people saw her and her nakedness, people ran away from her either in fear or disgust, taking her for a potentially dangerous lunatic or a fool. And indeed, how many people care to be confronted with naked Truth?”
BJ’s second story about the fate of the Truth, is chilling. He said it came across Falsehood and they had a fight in which the latter drew out a hidden machete and severed Truth’s head. But: “With one superhuman pull, he (Truth) yanked off the head of Falsehood and placed it on his own body. And that is why from that day, we have had that grotesque mismatch: the body of Truth and the head of Falsehood.”
BJ said hypothetically: “Just imagine when Truth has been killed off, we will no longer be bothered with not having ever to tell the truth and we can then tell all the lies we want – as both Elon Musk and Donald Trump want all life on our planet to be…” The literary giant then declared: “Truth is not dead. For if truth is dead, we are dead, too.”
Proclaiming, like an itinerant missionary, that Truth is indeed alive, Odia argued that the nature of truth is “a basis for social regeneration”. However, he warned that: “Truth is not about choosing between an aspect, a fraction and the whole…The Truth is supposed to be the Truth everywhere as there are many opinions but only one paradigm representing community”.
The submissions of BJ and Odia that the Truth is not dead corroborate my lunar sightings of the Truth. Based on these, I had titled my September 6, 2021 column: “The Truth walks on crutches of Lies.” So, if you see the Truth walking towards you, know that its crutches are lies.
Searching for the Naked Truth with Wole Soyinka at 90
