Essayists From Nigeria

"The accumulated heritage—that is what we are celebrating. Mali. Chaka. Songhai. Glory. Empires."

"I consider The Road a masterpiece."

"He is remembered in Nigeria with awe, both for a political boldness that landed him in prison and for a commanding intellect that is manifest in every genre he tackles."

"Chinua Achebe was a real education for me, a real education. And certainly the plays of Soyinka and The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born of Ayi Kwei Armah-those things were at that time real, and they're the kinds of books that one can re-read with enormous discoveries subsequently."

"Now, the most eloquent irreligious individual voice in Nigeria is our first Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka. Soyinka is an eminent literary scholar. He has consistently argued for tolerance and respect for the humanity of all in the face of religious intolerance and extremism. Soyinka has not minced words in condemning the unconscionable religious gladiators in the region that have often turned the country into a theatre of absurdity and holy wars. He has been consistent in his condemnation of the jihadists and crusaders who often orchestrate religious bloodletting in their quest to implement Sharia law or to further some self-styled divine mandate. While I cannot say for sure how impactful his rational appeals are on policies and programs, Soyinka’s statements are sources of hope and light at times of darkness and despair. I can say for certain that on occasions when religious extremists push the nation to the brink. When religion blinds and people are unable to see or think clearly, when fear and fanaticism loom very large, Soyinka is a voice of rational sanity, thoughtful courage, and moderation."

"What I sensed in Soyinka is that, for the most part, as a middle-aged man he is able to look back on his childhood and still see his early life with that fresh eye."

"I like a writer like Ngugi, who lashes out, because he knows what is good and bad in writing. And I think this is true of Wole Soyinka, too... I admire Soyinka because I think he's continuous, much more continuous, as a writer…Wole Soyinka deserves the Nobel Prize."

"My themed reading for both flights was Wole Soyinka, anything I had not yet read by the Nigerian novelist, memoirist, poet, and playwright. Because New York City was our final destination, I lingered over a poem of his titled "New York, U.S.A," which had been published more than a decade earlier. "Control was wrested from your pilot's hands,/And yours, mid-Atlantic, hapless voyager./Deafened the engine's last descent/To all but disordered echoes of your feet.""

"Ours is a strong breed my son. It is only a strong breed that can take this boat to the river year after year and wax stronger on it. I have taken down each year’s evils for over twenty years. I hoped you would follow me."

"Surely it is too much to ask a man to give up his own soil."

"A village which cannot produce its own carrier contains no men."

"But then I am a woman. I have a woman’s longings and weaknesses."

"There is peace in being a stranger."

"The very least we can live with is an agreement that does not reduce us to slaves of imposition, but makes us partners of consent."

"In one form or the other, the quest for human dignity has proved to be one of the most propulsive elements for wars, civil strife and willing sacrifice. Yet the entitlement to dignity, enshrined among the 'human rights', does not aspire to being the most self-evident, essential need for human survival, such as food, or physical health."

"Everyone is linked, all our actions have ramifications, and music is a teacher of this interconnected reality."

"...the Christian world is not one, neither is the Islamic, nor does their combined authority speak to or for the entire world, but the world of the fanatic IS one and it cuts across all religions, ideologies and vocations."

"(Soyinka, 64)"

"The fault, of course, is not in religion, but in the fanatic of every religion. Fanaticism remains the greatest carrier of the spores of fear, and the rhetoric of religion, with the hysteria it so readily generates, is fast becoming the readiest killing device of contemporary times."

"There is nothing in the least delicate about the slaughter of innocents. We all subscribe to the lofty notions contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but, for some reason, become suddenly coy and selective when it comes to defending what is obviously the most elementary of these rights, which is the right to life."

"Sadly, it is within the religious domain that the phenomenon of rhetorical hysteria takes its most devastating form...."

"If you believe in democracy, are you not thereby obliged to accept, without discrimination, the fall-outs that come with a democratic choice, even if this means the termination of the democratic process itself?"

"Today, the constituency of fear has become much broader, far less selective."

"For the fire consumes all but the arsonist."

"My secret is my eternal burden—to pierce the encrustations of soul-deadening habit, and bare the mirror of original nakedness—knowing full well, it is all futility."

"Envy, but not from prowess of his adze."

"The totem, my final insult. The final taunt from the human pigs."

"What are you? Men have killed for me. Men have died for me. Have you flints in your eye? Fool, have you never lived?""

"When your business men ruin the lesser ones, do you go crying to them? I also have no pity for the one who invested foolishly. Investors, that is all they ever were—to me."

"Now what am I thinking of? I must be getting tired. No sensible man burns the house to cook a little yam."

"Trouble me no further. The fooleries of beings whom I have fashioned closer to me weary and distress me. Yet I must persist, knowing that nothing is ever altered. My secret is my eternal burden—to pierce the encrustations of soul-deadening habit, and bare the mirror of original nakedness—knowing full well, it is all futility."

"We must remember that the only true giants are those who walk with the people, not over them."

"Ideas, like everything else, can be corrupted. Power is like that: it pollutes everything it touches."

"Power is transient, but the deeds of those who wield it can leave an indelible mark on history."

"We are the giants who bestride the world like a colossus, while others are mere mortals."

"The ground that man walks on, has it not always been there?"

"Man is a bird without wings and a tree without roots."

"Change was impossible to predict. A tempo, a mood would have settled over the house, over guests, relations, casual visitors, poor relations, 'cousins,' strays – all recognized within a tangible pattern of feeling – and then it would happen!"

"It is time to commence the mental shifts for admittance to yet another irrational world of adults and their discipline"

"Wild Christian shushed him, but I saw no difference in both their attitudes. I was overwhelmed by only one fact- there was neither justice nor logic in the world of grown-ups"

"Yes, you know damned well what you should have done if you sincerely desired their surrender. You could have dropped it [the atom bomb] on one of their mountains, even in the sea, anywhere they could see what would happen if they persisted in the war, but you chose instead to drop it on peopled cities. I know you, the white mentality: Japanese, Chinese, Africans, we are all subhuman. You would drop an atom bomb on Abeokuta or any of your colonies if it suited you"

"Things do not always happen as one plans. There are many disappointments in life. There is always the unexpected. You plan carefully, you decide on one step after another, and then...well, that is life. We are not God. So you see, one cannot afford to be weighed down by the unexpected. You will find that only determination will bring one through, sheer determination. And faith in God. Don't ever neglect your prayers...."

"Because he could not bear to let honour fly out of doors, he stopped it with his life. The son has proved the father Elesin, and there is nothing left in your mouth to gnash but infant gums."

"Then I slowly realised that your greatest art is the art of survival. But at least have the humility to let others survive in their own way."

"Is there now a streak of light at the end of the passage, a light I dare not look upon?"

"The man dies in all who keep silent in the face of tyranny."

"There is only one home to the life of a river-mussel; there is only one home to the life of a tortoise; there is only one shell to the soul of man: there is only one world to the spirit of our race. If that world leaves its course and smashes on boulders of the great void, whose world will give us shelter?"

"[T]he PDP, on whose platform he stands, represents the most harrowing of this nation’s nightmares over and beyond even the horrors of the Abacha regime. If he wishes to be considered on his own merit, now is time for him, as well as others similarly enmeshed, to exercise the moral courage that goes with his repudiation of that party, a dissociation from its past, and a pledge to reverse its menacing future. We shall find him an alternative platform on which to stand, and then have him present his credentials along those of other candidates engaged in forging a credible opposition alliance."

""Come January 20, 2017; watch my WOLEXIT" [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/nobel-prize-winner-wole-soyinka-donald-trump-throws-away-green-card-a7450141.html"

"England is a cesspit. England is the breeding ground of fundamentalist Muslims. Its social logic is to allow all religions to preach openly. But this is illogic, because none of the other religions preach apocalyptic violence. And yet England allows it. Remember, that country was the breeding ground for communism, too. Karl Marx did all his work in libraries there....We should assemble all those who are pure and cannot abide other faiths, put them all in rockets, and fire them into space.....A virus has attacked the world of sense and sensibility, and it has spread to Nigeria....The assumption of power over life and death then passed to every single inconsequential Muslim in the world-as if someone had given them a new stature...Al Qaeda is the descendent of this phenomenon. The proselytization of Islam became vigorous after this. People went to Saudi Arabia. Madrassas were established everywhere."