Our website use cookies to improve and personalize your experience and to display advertisements (if any). Our website may also include cookies from third parties like Google Adsense, Google Analytics, and Youtube. By using the website, you consent to the use of cookies.

Kole Omotoso, the Nigerian writer, scholar and actor who inspired a continent

Kole Omotoso, the Nigerian writer, scholar and actor who inspired a continent

BANKOLE Ajibabi Omotoso, better known as Kole Omotoso, the Nigerian novelist, playwright, journalist, scholar and actor, died on 19 July 2023. His son Akin Omotoso, a filmmaker, announced the death of the writer on Instagram. It came at a time when Nigeria was celebrating the 89th birthday of Wole Soyinka, Africa’s first Nobel laureate in literature and Omotoso’s colleague at the then-University of Ife. Both were so prominent nationwide that everyone wanted to go to Ife and study at their feet, especially those aspiring to a career in the arts or humanities. OLAYINKA OYEGBILE, Journalist and Communications scholar, Trinity University,…
Read More
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…
Read More