Re: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Whole Soyinka, Integrity, and Awards From "Undemocratic Governments"

On Friday, June 20, 2025, one Professor Okey Iheduru posted on this platform a short message titled : Whole Soyinka, Integrity, and Awards From Undemocratic Governments. The short message reads, "In 2014, this man (Wole Soyinka) rejected an award from President Goodluck Jonathan citing DEMOCRATIC PRINCIPLES. Today he accepted the same award from Tinubu who is far more undemocratic. You decide if this man lives on his own principles or is he an OVERRATED ETHNIC BIGOT. Due to the midsummer festivities in Sweden, in addition to international tension following the bombing of Iranian nuclear energy facilities by the Israeli-USA military alliance, I didn't see Professor Okey Iheduru's post until Wednesday, 25 June 2025. In my short response on the same day, I averred that Professor Wole Soyinka rejected the award from President Jonathan because the son of Sanni Abacha, Sadiq Abacha, was to receive national award on behalf of his late father who, during his lifetime, was the greatest enemy of democracy, simultaneously with Soyinka. Although Professor Soyinka never accused President Goodluck Jonathan of being undemocratic, I requested Professor Okey Iheduru to furnish forum members on what ground he considers President Bola Ahmed Tinubu's government undemocratic. Since Professor Okey Iheduru is not coming forth, to challenge my assertion that Wole Soyinka had never at anytime proclaimed President Jonathan's government undemocratic and to provide us  with President Bola Ahmed Tinubu's undemocratic credentials, therefore, I want to add some points to what I wrote before in view of the opinions offered by Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju on  Professor Soyinka.

To begin with, Professor Okey Iheduru clearly indicated that he was all out to insult and demean Professor Soyinka whose first name, Wole, he ridiculously substituted with Whole. Whatever offence Professor Wole Soyinka might have committed against Professor Okey Iheduru, it is wrong and rude to deliberately counterfeit his first name, Wole to Whole. That is the kind of behaviour one would expect to see from a street urchin, a liar and a fraudster. The democratic principles which  Professor Okey Iheduru claimed that Professor Wole Soyinka proclaimed in 2014 for rejecting national award from President Jonathan  was not related to his government but to General Sanni Abacha, the late military ruler who was also being honoured posthumously at the same time. If the late General Jeremiah Useni who was Abacha's deputy were to be posthumously  awarded national honour at the same time as Professor Wole Soyinka by President Tinubu, and Professor Soyinka accepted it, then it would have been obvious that Soyinka's democratic principles are crooked. But that logical reasoning is not for a hebephrenic Professor Okey Iheduru who loves to infer ethnicity into Soyinka's acceptance of national award from Tinubu's government. What Professor Okey Iheduru is telling forum members and visitors is, "Professor Soyinka is a Yoruba, that is why he accepted national award from a Yoruba President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, but rejected the same award from President Goodluck Jonathan in 2014 because of democratic principles which, according to Professor Iheduru, are worse now under President Tinubu than in 2014."  It is quite revealing to observe that Iheduru in his message did not recognize Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the President of Nigeria which is why he wrote, "Today he  (Soyinka) accepted  the same award from Tinubu who is far more undemocratic."  To Professor Iheduru, Goodluck Jonathan was a President but not Bola Ahmed Tinubu whom Iheduru only referred to with his surname, Tinubu without the Title, President. Certainly the real ethnic bigot is Professor Okey Iheduru himself, who tried to create Professor Wole Soyinka in his, Iheduru's, image but has failed woefully. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu posthumously honoured Ken Saro-Wiwa and the eight Ogoni environmentalist who were murdered by General Sanni Abacha. Professor Iheduru should tell us the name of Abacha's Attorney General and Minister of Justice when the Ogoni 9 were murdered.

Those who are not suffering from intellectual menopause will remember that when President Umaru Musa Yar 'Adua was in coma in 2010, Bola Ahmed Tinubu's party, ACN, as well as Professor Wole Soyinka were among the people who advocated that the then Vice-President Goodluck Ebelechukwu Jonathan be elevated to the Acting President which was done by the National Assembly in February 2010, under what was termed Doctrine of Necessity. He subsequently became substantive President on May 10, 2010, when Yar 'Adua officially died. Thereafter, PDP members from the North insisted that Jonathan should only complete his joint tickets with Yar 'Adua and should not contest for the Presidency in 2011 but other voices including that of Wole Soyinka asserted the right of President Goodluck Jonathan to contest the election according to the 1999 Constitution which is superior to the PDP constitution on rotational presidency between the North and South every eight years which the Northern PDP wanted to invoke. Jonathan's contest for the Presidency in 2015 was not at all very clear since the 1999 Constitution limits the swearing in of a president to only two times and if Jonathan contested and won in 2015, that would have meant being sworn in as President the third time. However, he lost and conceded defeat to his opponent Muhammadu Buhari.

The bat-like posture of Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju makes it very difficult in this discourse to identify him whether as a mouse or a bird. At best, he is very chameleonic. Mr. Adepoju wrote among other things on Monday June 23, 2025 thus, "Some people think Soyinka has betrayed the principles he has himself championed. I'm of that view myself. He (Soyinka) seems to fume in the Man Died about the Biafran Commander, Victor Banjo delaying in the Midwest before proceeding towards Lagos in the name of effecting the capture of the SW on behalf of Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War, enabling the Federal govt to regroup and defeat the Biafrans at Ore, the first major defeat of Biafra in that war and the turning of the tide against the Biafran secession. Note that Soyinka is a Yoruba, Banjo was Yoruba."  Mr. Adepoju is yet to learn that truth is not circumlocutory, truth is constant, it does not shift, it doesn't move, it doesn't twist and turn. Although the invasion of the Midwest by the Biafrans 2nd Battalion was led by Victor Banjo. his second in Command, Lt. Colonel Festus Akagha, was an Igbo as well as all the soldiers in their mission. They were to move from Benin to Lagos through Ore and Ijebu Ode to seize Lagos. The 1st Battalion was led by another Igbo man called Lt. Col. Mike Ivenso who was assigned to the Northern Sector and was to move to Owo through Akure to seize Ibadan. The 3rd Battalion led by Lt. Col. Humphrey Iwuchukwu Chukwuka was to move through Sapele, Warri, to advance along the coast to launch a two-pronged attack on Lagos. It was plain that Lt. Col. Victor Banjo was just a figure leader of Biafra's 2nd Battalion that invaded Midwest, since his deputy commander was an Igbo as well as all the infantries. Banjo's soldiers fought at Ore, where did Ivenso who was supposed to capture Ibadan through Owo and Akure fight? Where did Chukwuka who was supposed to move through Sapele and Warri to attack Lagos fight? Nsukka was captured 15 July 1967 by the Federal Forces and Midwest incursion began on August 9, 1967. And what has Banjo and Soyinka being Yoruba got to do with the badly planned invasion of the Midwest by Biafra in 1967?

On Wednesday, June 25, 2025 at 2:18:23 AM UTC+2 ogunlakaiye wrote:

While rejecting the National Award from President Jonathan in September 2014, Professor Wole Soyinka clearly stated that he could not stay on the same platform with Sadiq Abacha, the son of Sanni Abacha, who was to receive award on behalf of his late father, the greatest anti-democracy in the history of Nigeria. Professor Soyinka never referred to President Jonathan's government as undemocratic and Professor Wole Soyinka's rejection of the national award was based purely on award to the late brutal military dictator, Sanni Abacha. If Professor Okey Iheduru considers the government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu undemocratic, from whom Professor Wole Soyinka must not accept national award, he, Iheduru, must tell readers why Tinubu's government is undemocratic. Nevertheless, that will be a different case which is not in anyway related to why Soyinka rejected the national award from President Goodluck Jonathan in 2014. In view of the aforesaid, to refer to Professor Wole Soyinka as an 'ethnic bigot' because he accepted national award from President Bola Ahmed Tinubu's government can only come from a professorial dimwit, lacking in brain power to process facts needed in making sound judgments.

S. Kadiri   

On Monday, June 23, 2025 at 9:17:50 PM UTC+2 Folami Kolade wrote:

Soyinka is 90 years old and he has given his all to all. He was in solitary confinement for 30 months and was nearly killed for the same cause. If he is no longer fighting for a future that he will not be part of, he should be allowed to retire and enjoy his last days as he deems fit. Let those who are younger today and who fight them continue the struggle. In the final analysis, the majority of us are what Soyinka described in the MAN DIED as a "nation of fence-sitters."

On Mon, Jun 23, 2025 at 5:16 AM Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:

Some people think Soyinka has betrayed the principles he has himself championed.

I'm of that view myself.

A better picture of Soyinka might not be simply that of an activist but of an activist-politician, whose strategies are not always aligned with democratic principles.

He seems to fume in The Man Died about the Biafran commander Victor Banjo delaying in the Midwest before proceeding towards Lagos in the name of effecting the capture of the SW on behalf of Biafra during the Nigerian Civil War, enabling the Fed govt to regroup and defeat the Biafrans at Ore, the first major defeat of Biafra in that war and the turning of the tide against the Biafran secession.

Why should a self described  social justice activist who claimed to be unaligned with any side as he sought to prevent sales of arms to either side  be unhappy that a commander from the  secessionist  group is delayed in his efforts to capture the commercial centre of the nation, leading to the strategic Biafran defeat?

What is the full story about the reasons for  Nigerian head of state Yakubu  Gowon's imprisonment of Soyinka during the war?

Note that Soyinka is Yoruba. Banjo was Yoruba. Some of the Biafran leadership was from the minority SE. But the core of Biafra, particularly as the war dragged on, was Igbo.

Why did Soyinka ally himself with the same Buhari he had earlier condemned as unfit for national leadership in "The Trouble with Buhari?"

Why did Soyinka help legitimize the govt of IBB who came to power through a coup by serving in his govt, chastising those who challenged his decision as "disco critics" who prefer perpetual critique to participating in active  nation building?

When one has projected themselves  in terms of high visibility or high  standards of public engagement, the person will invite critique.

Soyinka was the first to suggest that the 2011 Boko Haram terrorism  resurgence was due to disgruntled PDP politicians from the North who felt shortchanged by the PDP's choice of GEJ as their flag bearer.

For this Adamu Adamu published a brilliant condemnation of Soyinka in relation to Soyinka's championing of Yoruba spirituality, which Adamu conflated with traditional African spirituality and depicted as inferior to Islam.

Years later,national security officer Azazi made a similar declaration as Soyinka and shortly after perished in a helicopter crash.

Azazi's aides declared they would reveal the results of their enquiry into Boko Haram sponsors. We later heard no more from them.

In reporting accounts of weapons being dropped on cattle routes, Soyinka was the first person known to me to sound the alarm about the convergence of Fulani herdsmen and the creation of a private army that later blossomed into the Fulani militia/violent Fulani herdsmen crisis that escalated with the obvious though tacit support of Buhari 's govt but to enable that govt  the same Soyinka backed Buhari, an open critic of the war against Boko Haram and a clear right wing ethnocentrist, for Presidency.

People trying to understand Soyinka's complex political history could focus on particular episodes but how does one grasp the complete configuration of something that does not have the same shape all the time?

Apologies for my recurrent comments. Its because I'm intrigued by Soyinka whom I deeply admire but don't consider a model for political activity even  as I understand his art as operating at the limits of human creativity.

Great thanks

Toyin

On Mon, Jun 23, 2025, 11:22 AM Ivor Agyeman-Duah <ivoragye...@gmail.com> wrote:

The problem with Nigerian politics is sometimes the inability of some of its intellectual power houses- obviously the biggest on the continent, to so exercise this power without ethnic proclivities. More often than not, logic is lost. People have the right to accept national awards or reject them. More so, if the givers at a particular time, and their politics and morality do not align with potential recipients. Sometimes they do not even need to align but just dislike them (the givers) which are within the parameters of nature. They are entitled to do so. 

Wole Soyinka chose when and the acceptance of the givers. For some to say he is wrong and lacks morality is their opinion which may not necessarily be shared by Soyinka . And so where lies the issue?

Some of the other recipients ( even the deceased were represented by families)  are among the revered names in Nigeria.

Why is Soyinka singled out for so-called moral arbitration through ethnic eyes? A man who has stood up all his life for Nigeria's democratic evolution which is now upon us all.

If the current administration is morally bankrupt,corrupt and not fit for purpose, those who think so should wait for the next election and vote the government out.

Many Nigerian academics sometimes cite Chinua Achebe from The Trouble with Nigeria whose penultimate line is that there is nothing wrong with Nigeria but squarely a problem of leadership.

He was not talking only about political leadership of Nigeria but indeed also about the academic leadership which can be low-sided.

The deification of academics by colleagues, the dominance of letters in spaces leading to cults also have their moral let-downs with equivalent in public office.

Ivor Agyeman-Duah

On Mon, Jun 23, 2025 at 7:28 AM Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:

You are making the same mistake Okey.

On Mon, Jun 23, 2025, 7:00 AM Okey Iheduru <okeyi...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks for your intervention, Toyin. 

You can't expect less invectives from anyone who is socialized into "the insult culture. 

What should worry us is that historians who ought to be among the best-trained scholars with the knack for re-examining "history" and 'history-makers" in the light of new facts and evidence seem to be relishing being prisoners of history and peddlers of a single story about Wole Soyinka. The man died almost 60 years ago, folks!

Regards,

Okey Iheduru

On Sun, Jun 22, 2025 at 9:39 PM Oluwatoyin Adepoju <ovde...@gmail.com> wrote:

Its not helpful insulting Okey over his stance.

The stance should be analyzed instead.

What Okey did not mention is the broader context of his analysis, a well known style of Soyinka  analysis in the Nigerian online space, a context of which the recent incident in question is only the latest illustration of what is seen as Soyinka's questionable pro-Tinubu politics.

There was a substantial shift in Soyinka's politics in his alignment with the APC, beginning perhaps from the crisis in the governor's forum involving a struggle between that forum and the GEJ govt, in which Rivers State governor Rotimi Amaechi was prominent, a relationship that has seen Soyinka in consistent battle with GEJ and his wife, struggles part of the broad based struggle to remove GEJ but which eventually focused in the choice of Buhari as the APC Presidential candidate, a logical choice being the strongest politician in the North but a tainted choice given his antecedents, of which Soyinka had been the most trenchant chronicler, a choice that eventually led to his Presidency and after him to the Tinubu Presidency.

What is the morality and logic of Soyinka's role in the highly controversial impact of the APC in Nigeria, from Fulani militia terrorism led by Miyetti Allah becoming a parallel govt through Buhari, a scourge that continues today to the devastating economic policies running from the end of the Buhari Presidency to that of Tinubu?

The Tinubu Presidency was framed by Tinubu himself as a Yoruba centric project with himself at the centre, at his strategic "emilokan" speech when the APC chairman, in the face of a seemingly passive Buhari was making moves suggesting Tinubu could be edged out of the APC Presidential race after Buharis eight years.

Tinubu got the Presidency but lost in Lagos, his stronghold, an apocalyptic outcome to which Lagos APC responded with a brutal anti-Igbo campaign in the guber elections to destabilize guber candidate Rhodes-Vivour whose wife is Igbo, that campaign being the arrowhead of the use of Yoruba ethnicity as the primary criterion for SW leadership, in the face of the clear trans-ethnic slant Lagos politics had assumed as evident in Tinubu 's defeat in Lagos.

There is a lot about the APC that suggests it's been centrally an ethnic alliance, a balance between the Muslim North and the SW represented by Tinubu, in spite of the rebellion of the SW governors against  Buhari's Fulani herdsmen national proliferation agenda.

So, when people describe Soyinka's relationship with Tinubu and the APC project as having ethnic overtones, those considerations cannot be dismissed but need examining.

As for who is more democratic between GEJ and Tinubu, one could compare the presence or absence of oppression of people's democratic rights  under both Presidents- attacks of demonstrators, on social media activists and offline activists etc

Thanks

Toyin

On Mon, Jun 23, 2025, 12:21 AM 'Emeagwali, Gloria (History)' via USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Ok

Correct me if I am wrong 

but didn't the said Wole Soyinka

not go to jail over the Biafra

war?

Dr. Gloria Emeagwali
Professor of History/African Studies, CCSU
Chief Editor- "Africa Update"
https://sites.ccsu.edu/afstudy/archive.html
Gloria Emeagwali's Documentaries
www.vimeo.com/gloriaemeagwali
www.africahistory.net
Founding Coordinator, African Studies, CCSU

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From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Akin Ogundiran <ogun...@gmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 22, 2025 9:51 AM
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Whole Soyinka, Integrity, and Awards From "Undemocratic Governments"

 

EXTERNAL EMAIL: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click any links or open any attachments unless you trust the sender and know the content is safe.

Okey Iheduru, 

For you to come to this platform and call Wole Soyinka " an overrated ethnic bigot" for accepting an award from President Bola Tinubu and rejecting a previous award from President Goodluck Jonathan shows how your ethnic bigotry is eating you inside out. Only a clown (more so someone like you who makes a living as a political scientist) would claim that Jonathan was somehow more democratic than Tinubu.

Akin Ogundiran

On Friday, June 20, 2025 at 7:18:58 PM UTC-5 Okey Iheduru wrote:

In 2014, this man rejected an award from President Goodluck Jonathan citing democratic principles. Today he accepted the same award from Tinubu who is far more undemocratic. You decide if this man lives on his own principles or is he an overrated ethnic bigot... 

Okey C. Iheduru

e-mail: okeyi...@gmail.com

 développement. https://doi.org/10.1080/02255189.2024.2393586. 

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 développement. https://doi.org/10.1080/02255189.2024.2393586. 

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