Ruyi's World of Books & Stories

Wole Soyinka's work as a teacher of his nation and people in the last seven decades can be summed up in one word: transcendence. His entire envisioning of Nigeria – for which he has suffered persecution, deprivation, abuse, insults and other unspeakable forms of punishment – is reducible to transcendence. The tragedy of Nigeria is that there has never been a critical mass huge enough to embrace the intellectual and civic responsibilities of transcendence. Justice, Soyinka says, is the first condition of humanity. Sadly, this is not his most famous ‘quotable quote’ among his compatriots. What many Nigerians learn by rote is that other quote from his book, The Man Died. The two quotes, as indeed the entirety of Soyinka’s work and vision, are rooted in a transcendent view of society and her future. When Soyinka says justice is the first condition of humanity, he does not pause to enter qualifications, caveats, conditions, equivocation, and hesitation. It is a tr...