Wole Soyinka, Nigeria, and the Contradictions of the Nigerian Civil War

Abstract

Wole Soyinka’s role as an activist, an anti-war advocate, and an opposition diplomat earned him a reputation beyond the theoretical and creative enterprise of most of his contemporaries. His most dynamic initiative was, perhaps, his daredevil intervention and visit to Biafra to hold talks for a détente during the Nigerian Civil War. Soyinka became a national figure because of his consequent incarceration by the Nigerian government that could not condone his political orientation and his anti-war advocacy. Soyinka’s foresight on the 1960 independence, his advocacy against the recurring conflicts that led to the Nigerian Civil War and terrifying consequences, run through his critical, nonfictional, fictional and biographical writing. This paper examines Soyinka’s agency and resistance to war, and his efforts towards conflict resolution during the Nigerian Civil War. It engages the Soyinka biography, particularly his prison notes, as a source of reading Soyinka’s participation and his portrayal of the politics of the Nigerian Civil War as well as the contradictions of war locally and globally. In The Man Died, Soyinka is the incarcerated victim of war. In Madmen and Specialists, Soyinka is the absurd dramatist who shocks his audience with the realities and consequences of war on stage. Soyinka as an anti–war advocate, an opposition diplomat and social critic, constructs his world through his creative writings and his critical interventions.