At almost ninety two, Wole Soyinka remains strong and razor-sharp. The Obidients bear witness to his roar and linguistic agility. Yet three years into his bosom friend’s presidency, and for the first time since 1960, Soyinka appears comfortable with a president’s atrocities and sacrilege. Has the man died?

During the 2023 elections he claimed he was out of the country and out of touch. Yet he noticed enough to eviscerate Peter Obi’s running mate and supporters. He apparently missed the thugs chasing Igbo voters from polling booths in Lagos. What he saw instead was a headless mob of nattering nitwits spitting venom at elders and institutions. He didnt see  youth frustration , ethnic  and political cleavages amplified  by social media. He spotted fascism when Datti Ahmed dared speak of a stolen election and urging defiance against a  captured judiciary. When Peter Obi tried to assuage him, the old man beheld only a Gbajue Peter. Peter was deemed a counterfeit  for failing to rein in his supporters whose fiery  passion didnt spare elders in the political street brawl on  social media.  Until that point, Soyinka’s sense of fairness and courage had never been publicly doubted. 

When Tinubu assumed office and his drastic policies unleashed untold economic hardship, Nigerians urged Soyinka to speak. He replied that it was his custom to grant every new president a one-year honeymoon. So the public waited. Even if Tinubu broke the calabash of a deity, Soyinka would say nothing. When the president assembled the fattest, most morally flabby cabinet in memory, silence. When reforms squeezed the masses while profligacy and moral decadence reigned in public office, still silence. The honeymoon stretched on.

Tinubu has now been in the saddle for three years. Hunger protesters have been brutally repressed  Some of them children detained for months without trial. Peaceful protest is now treated as subversion. An elected governor was temporarily yanked from office for political convenience. The largest road contract in Africa was awarded to the president’s friend without due process. Critical portfolios have been concentrated in Yoruba hands in a brazen escalation of the tribalism Tinubu inherited. Drug barons and a murderer received presidential pardons. A convicted money-launderer who helped Abacha fleece the nation has been awarded the country’s second-highest honour. Tinubu’s allies have waged a slow, judiciary-assisted liquidation of the major opposition parties. The country teeters on a precipice.

While all this unfolded, Soyinka looked away.

Yet he himself once wrote that a man dies in him who stays silent in the face of evil. Our ancestors advised that if fear or cowardice seals his lips, he should cover his head with a basket, shout, and run. But there is yet another option. As  Soyinka once prescribed, he could pin the oppressor’s picture in his toilet and spit at it every morning.  Such quiet revulsion can  salvage a dying  manhood.

Soyinka is a deity. He is beyond reproach. He has paid his dues in full. The baton of resistance should long have passed to the young. But if the old lion still has breath to swat pesky mosquitoes, he should at least notice the elephant in the room. When a deity chases rats while his house burns, he must be called out with love. His selective silence now sounds like complicity.

When he turned up to celebrate the Lagos-Calabar, a  road awarded promiscuously to the president’s friend, he called himself “a sucker for roads.” The old Soyinka would have gone nowhere near that road. It now seems that if Abacha had been sufficiently friendly to the sage , he might not have been such a villain after all. His sins might have been overlooked .Blood, it seems, is thicker than water. Who would have thought the activism of those days was not all altruism? It is sad to watch even the gods prove no better than Brother Jero.

Mere mortals no longer deem it irreverent to discuss the metamorphosis of Kongi. The Interpreters of his silence have fallen speechless. A Climate of Fear has been enthroned. A Harmattan Haze has descended on what promised to be an African Spring. The youths are fleeing. Once a giant, Nigeria has become The Open Sore of a Continent, exporting economic refugees to every corner of the earth.  The “renewed hope” has become a ruse. A Season of Anomie is upon us. The nation is shuffling into the crypt of a one-party state. Is this the second  coming of King Baabu?

For how long can Soyinka place friendship above country? We cannot allow him to  disavow his oracular status.  But it hurt that when he finally gathered the courage to speak, all he could muster was a complaint about Seyi Tinubu’s convoy of cars, soldiers and policemen. A president’s son protected by a battalion in a country ravaged by bandits. That should be outrageous. But when did  the great Soyinka begin ignoring the disease to fret over the most insignificant symptom? Seyi is not the problem. Has the oracle grown timid? Let him come into the open.  Perhaps he has not noticed Wike cruising in his Rolls-Royce with police outriders. Is there any arm of this government that pretends to probity and intergrity?  Obidients and Seyi  are  not good decoys. Does Soyinka owe Tinubu a duty of loyalty and secrecy? Or is this juju?

A man who spent his life taking personal risks for freedom, justice and development cannot simply switch off. Soyinka must finish strong against corruption and  political banditry. Our people say when a man wakes can be his morning . Soyinka must therefore  Set Forth At this Dawn of looming one party state. . He is not expected to lead protests. But as an oracle he cannot stay home and mute and allow the country go into labour tethered. The same country that birthed The Chronicles From  the Land of the  Happiest People on Earth. The Lion cannot forsake his Jewel. That precious name must be protected at all cost.