Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka turns 90 years today, Saturday, 13 2024. Many Nigerians rolled out the drums to celebrate the literary icon.
Below are 20 astonishing facts about Soyinka.
1. Soyinka was born on 13 July, 1934 and he is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language.
2. He was the first African to be awarded a Nobel Prize. He was awarded Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986 for his “wide cultural perspective and… poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence.
3. In July 2024, President Bola Tinubu renamed the National Arts Theatre in Iganmu, Lagos, after him.
4. Soyinka in 1954, attended Government College in Ibadan, and subsequently University College, Ibadan and the University of Leeds in England.
5. Soyinka had worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London after studying in Nigeria and the UK.
6. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections.
7. 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, for volunteering to be a non-government mediating actor.
8. During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria on a motorcycle via the Benin border. Abacha later proclaimed a death sentence against him “in absentia.”
9. From 1975 to 1999, Soyinka had been Professor of Comparative literature (1975–1999) at Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ifẹ.
10. He was made professor emeritus in 1999.
11. While in the United States, he taught at Cornell University as Goldwin Smith professor for African Studies and Theatre Arts from 1988 to 1991.
12. In December 2017, Soyinka received 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 people.
13. Soyinka had been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and has served as scholar-in-residence at New York University’s Institute of African American Affairs and at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California.
14. He had also taught at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Yale, and was a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Duke University in 2008.
15. He was raised in a religious family, attending church services and singing in the choir from an early age; however, Soyinka himself became an atheist later in life.
16. In April 2007, Soyinka called for the cancellation of the Nigerian presidential elections held two weeks earlier, beset by widespread fraud and violence.
17. Soyinka has been married three times and divorced twice. He has eight children from his three marriages and two other daughters.
18. In 2014, Soyinka revealed his battle with prostate cancer.
19. He has won scores of awards, many of which included honorary degrees, doctorates from reputed universities across the world.
20. The Nobel laureate has written over 30 plays, over seven novels, three short stories, six memoirs, over eight poems, 14 essays, three films and two translations.
