Akinwande Oluwole
Babatunde Soyinka (Yoruba: AkÃnwándé Olúwo̩lé Babátúndé
S̩óyÃinká; born 13 July 1934), known as Wole Soyinka is a Nigerian playwright, poet and essayist. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first
sub-Saharan African to be honoured in that category.
Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. In 1954, he attended Government College in 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 struggle
for independence from Great Britain. In 1965, he seized the Western
Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation
of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections.[citation
needed] In 1967, during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the
federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary
confinement for two years.
Soyinka has been a
strong critic of successive Nigerian governments, especially the country's many
military dictators, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been
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 "NADECO Route." Abacha later
proclaimed a death sentence against him "in absentia." With
civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation.
In Nigeria, Soyinka was
a Professor of Comparative literature (1975 to 1999) at
the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the
University of Ife. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, he was
made professor emeritus. While in the United States, he first taught at Cornell University as Goldwin 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.
Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and has
served as scholar-in-residence at NYU's Institute of African American Affairs
and at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, US. He has also
taught at the universities of Oxford, Harvard and Yale.[12][13] Soyinka was also a
Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Duke University in 2008.
In December 2017, he was awarded 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".
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