On this 91st birthday of Professor Wole Soyinka, the world does not merely mark the passage of years but pauses to honor the journey of a man who embodies the conscience of a continent. Born into the trembling soul of a colonized Nigeria in 1934, Wole Soyinka grew from the quiet child of Ake to the roaring literary lion whose pen shook empires, whose words battled tyranny, and whose life became a testament to the indomitable African spirit.
He is not just a playwright, a poet, a novelist, or an essayist. He is the custodian of stories once whispered in village squares, now immortalized in the libraries of the world. The man who carried the burdens of broken dreams, yet still crafted beauty out of chaos. From A Dance of the Forests to Death and the King’s Horseman, from The Man Died to You Must Set Forth at Dawn, every syllable Soyinka has penned is laced with the weight of history, the sting of truth, and the defiance of a man who refused to bow.
His life has known the cold silence of prison walls. During Nigeria’s Biafran war, he was locked away in solitary confinement for daring to call for peace. Two years behind bars, yet his mind roamed freer than the captors could imagine. There, in isolation, he scribbled on tissue paper, on scraps of life, composing thoughts that would later echo as The Man Died: Prison Notes of Wole Soyinka, a chilling narrative of courage when freedom was stripped away.
But the shadows never defined him. They tempered him. And when he walked free, he did not return bitter. He returned bolder. The man who once dared to storm a radio station in Ibadan to stop the announcement of a rigged election became the voice that dictators feared and oppressed masses revered. His activism was not the armchair intellectualism of the comfortable but the battle-tested resistance of a man who lived his words.
In 1986, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature — the first African to receive the honor — it was not merely a recognition of his literary genius, but a global acknowledgment that Africa’s voice mattered. His Nobel Lecture, “This Past Must Address Its Present,” remains a rallying cry against forgetting, against erasure, against the numbing comfort of silence.
Yet Soyinka’s life is not just a catalogue of battles. It is a mosaic of laughter, of wines shared among friends, of mischievous wit, of theater stages alive with drumming and chanting, of long drives through Ibadan roads, and of sunsets watched from his forest sanctuary in Abeokuta. He often reminds us that life, even when burdened, must be tasted, savored, questioned.
To listen to Wole Soyinka speak of death is to encounter a man unafraid of the beyond. He once mused that when he stands at the threshold of the other world, he will not seek celestial rewards nor fear eternal punishments. He will carry his questions forward, ever the restless seeker, ever the unbowed spirit. For him, life after life is not a promise; it is a continuation of inquiry.
At ninety-one, with silvered hair and a voice that still cuts through complacency, Soyinka remains Nigeria’s living oracle. He has seen comrades fall, dictators rise and fall, democracies betray their people, yet he stands — scarred but standing. His pen still moves, his voice still roars, his laughter still punctuates the spaces where too many have forgotten joy.
He belongs not just to Nigeria but to humanity. And today, as the world salutes Wole Soyinka, it does so not in mere celebration of longevity but in reverence of legacy. His good times, his storms, his iconic moments – from Nobel podiums to prison cells, from global stages to quiet forest retreats – all converge into one simple truth: here stands a man who refused to be silenced.
Happy 91st birthday, Kongi. May your words never fade, may your battles never be forgotten, and may your laughter outlive us all.
By : Jide Adesina
Author Between Borders: Lost in the Shadows of a Cold Country
1stafrika.com
July, 2025
