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Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka: Take the Battle To The Boko Haram Extremists

Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka: Take the Battle To The Boko Haram Extremists
Farah Mohamed
By 

Managing Editor, The WorldPost

Social critic Professor Wole Soyinka speaks on the Nigerian secessionist leader Odumegwu Ojukwu during the national inter-denominational funeral rites at Michael Opkara Square in Enugu, southeastern Nigeria, on March 1, 2012. Soldiers fired a 21-gun salute at the funeral of Odumegwu Ojukwu on Thursday as Nigerian leaders paid final respects to the man whose 1967 declaration of Biafran independence sparked a civil war. Forty-five years after he tried to split Nigeria asunder by proclaiming the Republic of Biafra, Ojukwu's coffin was draped in the national colours of white and green at the funeral service in the city of Enugu, attended by thousands. Ojukwu died in November in Britain at the age of 78 but his body was only flown back on Monday. AFP PHOTO/ PIUS UTOMI EKPEI (Photo credit should read PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP/Getty Images)
Social critic Professor Wole Soyinka speaks on the Nigerian secessionist leader Odumegwu Ojukwu during the national inter-denominational funeral rites at Michael Opkara Square in Enugu, southeastern Nigeria, on March 1, 2012. Soldiers fired a 21-gun salute at the funeral of Odumegwu Ojukwu on Thursday as Nigerian leaders paid final respects to the man whose 1967 declaration of Biafran independence sparked a civil war. Forty-five years after he tried to split Nigeria asunder by proclaiming the Republic of Biafra, Ojukwu's coffin was draped in the national colours of white and green at the funeral service in the city of Enugu, attended by thousands. Ojukwu died in November in Britain at the age of 78 but his body was only flown back on Monday. AFP PHOTO/ PIUS UTOMI EKPEI (Photo credit should read PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/AFP/Getty Images)

I have a cloud of sadness within me as I speak. It has to do with an absence, a non-event which, both as a product in itself and as the product’s fate, could easily stand – among similar testimonies – as symbolic of the mission of this gathering, and a number of others like it, at least in all societies which value the exertion of the mind and products of the imagination.

Before I state what that non-event is, I wish to emphasize very strongly that this is not meant as an indictment of this Book Fair of which I consider myself a part, having been with it – albeit marginally - from its very inception. That would be grossly misleading. My remarks represent a personal wish, generated by the nation’s current crisis of existence, and extend beyond this present location and time, even though they do take off from there. They are a continuation of a discourse on which I embarked years ago - and formed part of my BBC Reith Lecture series – CLIMATE OF FEAR.

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