Wole Soyinka

The immaculate Brother Jero, the velvet-hearted Brother Jero, the one and only articulate hero of Christ’s crusade: I have seen many actors bring this suave prophet of Wole Soyinka in The Trials of Brother Jero to life on the stage, most notably Ropo Ewenla during his Ibadan PlayHouse run. So, from the moment I saw […]

This July, Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka turns 92. In his honour, Olongo Africa is making Ebrohimie Road: a Museum of Memory available to watch online for free for seven days. The documentary film, produced by OlongoAfrica, directed by Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún and shot by veteran filmmaker Tunde Kelani examines how the personal story of one man […]

On re-usiting history 68-sh, 50-sh years later I The moment you use something, you initiate its death. II The most significant threat to historical work is not its inevitable decay (which is often how it appears in academic and public discourse), but the fact that said interventions become dated and fall out of use. In […]

[Lecture delivered on September 1, 2023 at the Freedom Park, Lagos.] ÌSẸ̀ṢE has come, but not gone. We salute all those – human rights activists, community leaders, affronted citizens, advocates of equity, and all –  but the state governors most especially – who have taken history to task and boldly formalized a level praying ground […]

One of the iconic photographs in Nigerian literature shows the poet John Pepper “J.P.” Clark Bekederemo – together with the novelist Chinua Achebe and the playwright Wole Soyinka – going to visit the military dictator Ibrahim Babangida sometime in 1986. Their mission was to plead for the life of Mamman Vatsa, a military General, who […]