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Wole Soyinka’s life of writing holds Nigeria up for scrutiny

Wole Soyinka’s life of writing holds Nigeria up for scrutiny

AKINWANDE Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka, known simply as Wole Soyinka, can’t be easily described. He is a teacher, an ideologue, a scholar and an iconoclast, an elder statesman, a patriot and a culturalist. The Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet and essayist is a giant among his contemporaries. In 1986, he became the first sub-Saharan African, and is one of only five Africans, to be awarded the Nobel prize for literature. This was in recognition of the way he “fashions the drama of existence”. Author ABAYOMI AWELEWA, Lecturer in African and African Diasporan Literature, University of Lagos His works reveal him as a…
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John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo: Nigeria’s bard, playwright and activist

John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo: Nigeria’s bard, playwright and activist

SOLA BALOGUN, Lecturer, Theatre and Media Arts, Federal University, Oye Ekiti AHEAD of his death on October 13, 2020, the renowned Nigerian poet and playwright John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo had given instructions on his burial. He wrote a poem, “My Last Testament”: This is to my family Do not take me to a mortuary, Do not take me to a church, Whether I die in or out of town, But take me home to my own, and To lines and tunes, tested on the waves Of time, let me lie in my place On the Kiagbodo River. If Moslems do it…
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