Peace, activism, and a pinch of controversy.

Wole Soyinka on the global stage.

Who was the first Nigerian to win a Nobel Peace Prize for his Literature?

Your whole self would scream “Wole Soyinka” because you remember being hounded by your teacher for the answer.

She is standing over you with a cane in hand and all you remember is a wild afro and Father-Christmas beards of a man who won a prize you knew nothing about. I digress.

Wole Soyinka is a National Treasure. What I mean by that is he is like a silent powerhouse.

When he speaks about what the government is doing right or wrong, we quote him as an authority. His words would earn you marks in a school debate: According to Wole Soyinka...” and your lecturer would nod, a proud mentor.

Your lecturer ignores the thought that, assuming he had Wole Soyinka in his class, he may have hated the guy.

Wole Soyinka was the poster child for Aluta. And if ‘Aluta” wasn’t such a mocked word, we’d still call him the poster child for Aluta.

In the University of Ibadan today, the Art theatre is named after Him as a monument to his bravery and audacity to question, question, question everything.

But I assume that when he founded the Pyrates Confraternity in 1952, they were not as ready to honour.

To his credit, despite the obvious terrible trajectory the Pyrates Confraternity took over the years, it was initially created to fight for social justice. Social justice or not, I have not known Nigerian Universities to get excited at students’ organized movements.

Later in the coming years, we would hear that Wole Soyinka had held a full radio station at gun point to stop them from broadcasting a false victory of Chief Ladoke Akintola in the Western Region’s Elections.

Extreme? I don’t know. I only know that it is a child that laughs when a soldier coming home limps.

Later in life, Wole Soyinka would be in prison twice. Once in solitary confinement for 27 months. He would write in that state (a constant frenzy or an abnormal calm, I imagine) writing in Cigarette wrappers and anything to scribble on.

Isn’t it ironic that he won the Peace prize?

Now when you hear Wole Soyinka talk against a government, mention a protest, be an authority. You do not argue the right or wrong, you remember that he paid his dues for a country he loved. You, on the other hand, are looking for how to japa.