13th July, 2022
Professor Wole Soyinka, the Nobel Laureate, is 88 years old today. He was born on 13 July, 1933 in Abeokuta. In a 1969 interview, he narrated what he lost when the Gowon regime detained him for two years.
He said he got himself involved in the political process, but he was not a politician. He added he was amazed that he was released, but he knew that one day it would happen.
On what he lost during the detention, he narrated: “I lost time, so many things damaged. So many creative possibilities have been retarded. My immediate business is to put things right.
Watch the video below:
In 1966 there were two military coups (Nzeogwu’s and the revenge one) and Nigeria appeared to be heading for a civil war after Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu declared south-east Nigeria to be the independent Republic of Biafra. In 1967, Soyinka attempted to negotiate a truce between the belligerent sides. However, the Yakubu Gowon regime thought he was trying to take sides with Ojukwu and his men. Gowon slammed Soyinka in the slammer for two years.
He was released in 1969 when the civil war ended. Apart from putting his detention experience in a book, The Man Died: Prison Notes, he granted the interview above, retrieved from YouTube.