Prof Wole Soyinka, The Greatest Playwright, Novelist, & Poet

Akínwándé Olúwolé Babátúndé Sóyíinká was born on 13th of July 1934 (age 90) in the beautiful city of Abeokuta, Southern Region, British Nigeria. Much of Soyinka's writing is concerned with "the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it". 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". With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned there.

🍁" Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth." ~Wole Soyinka

🍁" No one is rich enough to buy yesterday but if you hustle hard tomorrow could be yours.." ~Wole Soyinka

🍁" But the ultimate lesson is just to sit down and write.That's all... " ~Wole Soyinka

🍁" I don't know any other way to live but to wake up every day armed with my convictions, not yielding them to the threat of danger and to the power and force of people who might despise me." ~Wole Soyinka

🍁" And I believe that the best learning process of any kind of craft is just to look at the work of others." ~Wole Soyinka

Professor Wole Soyinka receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature from King Carl Gustaf of Sweden. Circa 1986. The 1st African author to become a Nobel Laureate. From 1975 to 1999, Soyinka had been Professor of Comparative literature (1975–1999) at Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ifẹ̀ and in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. While in the United States, he taught at Cornell University as Goldwin Smith professor for African Studies and Theatre Arts from 1988 to 1991 and then at Emory University, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. 

He has 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. He has also taught at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Yale, and was a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Duke University in 2008.

In July 2024, President of the federal republic of Nigeria Bola Tinubu renamed the National Arts Theatre in Iganmu, Lagos, after Soyinka. Tinubu announced this in a tribute he wrote to celebrate Soyinka in commemoration of his 90th birthday.