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Op-Ed: Nigerian Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka Reflects on What Feels Like 'Déjà Vu—In Tragic Vein'
I arrived home from external commitments just over a week ago to an extraordinary homecoming gift. It took the form of a movement—sometimes angry, sometimes entrancing, poignant, sometimes strident, certainly robust in expectations but always moving, visionary and organized. That movement demanded an end to [brutality] from state security agencies, focusing on a notorious unit…
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Wole Soyinka: Religion Doesn't Justify Mayhem
The following is the text of an address titled “Religion Against Humanity,” given by Nobel Prize-winning writer Wole Soyinka, a member of UNESCO’s International High Panel, at the 2012 Conference on the Culture of Peace and Non-Violence at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Sept. 21, 2012. (Special to The Root) — To…
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Boko Haram: The Butchers of Nigeria
In a blog entry at the Daily Beast, Nigerian Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka weighs in on the bloody homegrown battle being waged against Christians in Nigeria by the Boko Haram. He says that a corrupt nation led to the Islamic sect’s ability to terrorize the country. Over the past year, Nigeria’s homegrown terror group…
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Between Truths and Indulgences
”Are these the kings of whom the griots sang? Are these their descendants? We do not know them, but we know from which lines—between those who resisted, and those who fawned on the presence of their enslavers—the majority are descended …. If, in a freak teleological reversal, the world were to follow Napoleon’s example and…
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Wole Soyinka on Obama's Choice
The saddest song to have come out of Africa in recent times was actually composed as a song of celebration, written to mark the ascendancy of an African American to the presidency of the United States of America. It was a musical tribute by a Kenyan, and the lyrics say simply: “It is easier for…
