For Wole Soyinka @90

He has his legacies in our social and national consciousness.

Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) is his creation; started first as a volunteer corps of traffic controllers in the old Oyo state in the early 1980s before IBB “bought” him to his government’s side with an invitation to develop and start the FRSC in 1985/86.

And to him and his undergraduate friends at the University of Ibadan, credit goes for the formation of the Pyrates Confraternity – an anti-colonial youth consciousness movement on campus.

In the struggle to have the present “democracy” we are enduring, he was in the trenches, in exile, during Abacha’s military dictatorship notorious days. He was the face of the opposition to military dictatorship in Nigeria, routing Europe and the Americas exposing the evils of Abacha.

He was the first African Nobel laureate in literature. An intellectual enigma, a prolific writer; his works – the source to the making of many Professors and PhD theses cum dissertations.

He certainly has his many limitations in sociopolitical understanding of social classes and their roles in holding down society and otherwise. Especially the anti-thesis role of the ruling class against the evolution of a new society that would work for the social majorities through the revolutionary activities of the working class and other allied classes.

Nevertheless, he is Wole Soyinka, a professor without a preceding PhD; a one-man rioter against election riggers in the first republic; and an anti-Nigerian Biafra War activist, upon which he spent months in prison. His activities were inspiration to many to talk to powers that be without fear of persecution and repression. My generation and yours truly were positive victims of such inspiration.

He is Wole Soyinka, an enigma who starts his journey into the 10th decade of his life today. Another rare feat for a known victim but conqueror of prostate cancer.