Soyinka, Chimamanda And Obi-Dients: When Does Opinion Cross The Line?

 By Jideofor Adibe

In recent weeks Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, multiple award winning writer, Chimamanda Adichie, and supporters of Peter Obi, the presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the February 25, 2023 presidential election  (otherwise known as Obidients), have been trending. The backgrounds were an interview granted by Datti Baba Ahmed in which he was quoted as saying that whoever “swears in Mr. Tinubu has ended democracy in Nigeria”. Elsewhere, Dr. Datti Baba- Ahmed was also quoted as saying that Nigeria does not have a President-elect.  

*Chimamanda and Soyinka 

The conversation took a different turn when Soyinka criticised the comments by Dr. Datti Baba-Ahmed, saying: “I have never heard anyone threaten the judiciary on television the way Datti did I heard the kind of menacing, blackmailing language that we were treated to by Datti. That kind of do-or-die attitude and provocation is not what I think we have all been struggling for.”

Celebrating The Literary World Of JP Clark

By Hope Eghagha

It is within the context of a poignant, profound and perhaps arcane ritual imagination that we encounter John Pepper Clark in his literary world as evidenced by the evocative power of his primal poetic and dramatic compositions.

          *Professor Eghagha (Right) with the late pioneer writer, 

         Professor JP Clark 

Especially so are some of the early works such as Song of a Goat through Ozidi, the ‘middle’ The Boat, The Return Home, Full Circle, Casualties and the later Remains of a Tide.

His only known work of prose the semi-autobiographical and bitingly sarcastic America their America, at once immediate in content and prophetic in thematic concern exists outside this ontology of ritual and the mythic imagination.

Awolowo, Western Nigeria Television (WNTV) And The Barbarians

By Banji Ojewale

It has been said of Obafemi Awolowo, Western Nigeria’s first premier, that like Roman Empire’s first emperor, Augustus Caesar, he was ‘’an efficient organizer’’ and a ‘’great builder’’ who struck several feats that have remained unmatched in Nigeria’s record books several decades after his rule. In his severally referenced book, An Outline History of the World, H. A. Davies notes that Augustus appeared to have fulfilled his boast that ‘’he had found Rome a city of brick and left it a city of marble.’’ He transformed Rome from a small republic not only into an empire, but also into a civilization that has influenced world history over the ages.

*Awolowo Obafemi

With Awolowo, there are also parallels that are engraved on marble. As premier from 1954 to 1959, when Nigeria was yet a dependent colonial outpost of Britain, he ran a government that has since been rated the golden era of the southwest, the outer region of the area stretching eastwards to the banks of the Niger also  being beneficiaries. Awolowo introduced free education, the first in our clime. He then embarked upon a voyage of social reforms that heavily subsidized health to announce to the world the arrival of a socialist, even if of the centrist hue.

Celebrating The Literary World Of JP Clark

By Hope Eghagha

It is within the context of a poignant, profound and perhaps arcane ritual imagination that we encounter John Pepper Clark in his literary world as evidenced by the evocative power of his primal poetic and dramatic compositions. Especially so are some of the early works such as Song of a Goat through Ozidi, the ‘middle’ The Boat, The Return Home, Full Circle, Casualties and the later Remains of a Tide.

*JP Clark 

His only known work of prose the semi-autobiographical and bitingly sarcastic America their America, at once immediate in content and prophetic in thematic concern exists outside this ontology of ritual and the mythic imagination. Almost to the letter (or depth) of contemporary effusions from Trumpian America, this work captures the supercilious arrogance of white America and victims of racial disharmony narrated after a personal encounter with the programmed academy of American culture, capitalism and sociology which our young and bristling JP had found condescending and utterly restrictive.