Wole Soyinka @90, President Tinubu Names National Theatre After him

 

Professor Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta, Nigeria on July 13,1934. He was the 2nd born in the family of 7. In 1954, he attended Government College,Ibadan and subsequently University College Ibadan and the University of Leeds in England. After studying in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its campaign for independence from British colonial rule. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967, during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of GeneralYakubu Gowon and put in solitary aconfinement for two years, for volunteering to be a non-government mediating actor.

Soyinka has been a strong critic of successive Nigerian (and African at large) governments, especially the country's many military dictators, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of Soyinka's writing is concerned with "the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it" During the regime of General Sani Abacha(1993–98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria on a motorcycle via the Benin border. Abacha later proclaimed a death sentence against him "in absentia". With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned there.

From 1975 to 1999, Soyinka had been Professor of Comparative Literature (1975–1999) at Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ife and in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. While in the United States, he taught at Cornell University as Godwin Smith professor for African Studies and Theatre Arts from 1988 to 1991 and then at Emory University, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. He has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada,Las Vegas, and has served as scholar-in-residence at New York University's Institute of African American Affairs and at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. He has also taught at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Yale, and was a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Duke University in 2008.

In December 2017, Soyinka received the Europe Theatre Prize in the "Special Prize" category, awarded to someone who has "contributed to the realization of cultural events that promote understanding and the exchange of knowledge between peoples".

On Friday July 12,2024, President Tinubu named the National Theatre " WOLE SOYINKA CENTRE FOR CULTURE AND CREATIVE ARTS" in recognition of his global personal achievements in creative arts and culture.

AHOY! CAPTAIN BLACK

MOSCHINOBLOG WISHES KONGI, HAPPY 90th BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION.