Earth Week with Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka of Nigeria

By Sunny Lewis

LAS VEGAS, Nevada, April 27, 2001 (ENS) - Nigerian Nobel Prize winning author Wole Soyinka has an Earth Week message for the world about his homeland - at least a third of the entire country is polluted in some way.

Now writer in residence at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Soyinka is the first holder of the university's newly established Endowed Chair of Creative Writing. He shared some insights on the environmental and political problems of Nigeria during a break in a symposium on the freedom to write given at the university.

Author and dramatist Wole Soyinka addresses a meeting of the United Nations Environment Programme Governing Council, February 2001 (Photos courtesy Earth Negotiations Bulletin)

Soyinka says this is but one of many serious environmental difficulties in Nigeria.

"At least one third of the land is degraded, polluted in some way. Because even where you don't have oil exploration, the flaring of gas has been going on for at least two decades now. I've flown over those areas. I've seen the fires just burning, burning, burning ceaselessly, and we know what the effect of this is on the ecology, on the plant life, the animals and land. Even outside the immediate areas you do have definite degradation of the atmosphere."

"Also there are incidents of toxic waste being loaded on to Nigeria. In some cases the perpetrators have been caught, and there have been sharp diplomatic encounters between the Nigerian government and the offending government, but in some cases they've lain there and been discovered obviously years after the dumping has taken place. At least a third of the land surface has been affected in some way by disrespect for the environment."

With so much of the country affected by environmental problems, could they serve as a unifying force bringing people together to clean up the country, ENS asked.

"The politics of Nigeria, the tensions and contradictions in Nigeria are far too deep, too serious for even a common cause like environmental protection to be a unifying force. That unifying force has to be sought within the political arena," Soyinka said.

The inauguration of President Olusegun Obasanjo on May 29, 1999 marked the return of civilian rule after sixteen years of military governments.

Soyinka says things are somewhat better under the new regime. "I think the fact that I can go in and go out is already proof that at least the state is no longer the consuming cannibalistic ogre it used to be."

"But we have serious problems - of religious fundamentalism which has raised itself within this past year and is threatening to tear the country apart. And there is the issue of political relationship between the center and the various parts. Nigeria has gone through such a traumatizing experience that people are not really ready to settle for easy compromises," he explained.

Nigeria, the people adhere mainly to Christianity and Islam, and there is also a very strong following for the traditional religions. Nigeria is a secular state, but it recognizes the existence of these various religions, to the extent that those who live in the Islamic sectors of the country have their rights protected under the Constitution.

"They have a Sharia law, trial under the Sharia is permitted to consenting adults, but its areas are defined as civil issues, property rights, marriages, divorces," Soyinka explained.

"But now the states that have adopted the Sharia now insist that in their states only the Sharia law is supreme. And this includes criminal trials. They have actually had for the first time in our nation as a people, as a modern nation, we've had a case of amputation, and you've had people being stoned," he said indignantly.

In February 2000, there was rioting in the city of Kaduna in north central Nigeria. The Christians clashed with the Muslims over the introduction of Islamic law which is supposed to apply to everybody. At least 3,000 people died over two days of rioting.

"We've never, never had any problem of this nature, so this is not a religious issue, it's a political issue," said Soyinka. "There are people who have lost power who'll use religion as a means of destabilizing the country and eroding the kind of cohesion which has served the country well until now."

When human rights problems are so difficult, and destructive of life, how can the environmental problems be addressed? Do you have to solve the human rights problems first to address the environmental issues, or can they both be solved together, asked ENS.

"One is not exclusive of the other. Environment itself, the preservation of the environment, making sure that there is a healthy environment for people is also a fundamental human right. I don't see any contradiction and one does not have to be neglected at the expense of the other,"

The Ogoni people of the Niger Delta were led in their struggle against petroleum contamination by author Ken Saro-Wiwa who was hanged by the military government of General Sani Abacha in 1995.

No one can talk about human rights and environmental protection in Nigeria without talking of Ken Saro-Wiwa and his brother, Dr. Owens Wiwa who is an expatriate in Canada now.

Soyinka knows them personally and says the name Saro-Wiwa has become synonymous with the environmental struggle in Nigeria against exploitation by multi-national corporations, especially oil prospecting corporations.

"Yes, I knew Ken Saro-Wiwa very well," he said, "and know the struggle of the Ogoni people, and right now it's one being, for a change, seriously addressed by the government. The ultimate solutions have not been found, but at least the government has been made aware that this is not some problem that can just be brushed under the rug.

Ken Saro-Wiwa was also an author, as you are, a writer. Is it for the writers to be the conscience of the nation," ENS asked.

"I don't use expressions like that. For me, writers are citizens first and foremost, and that means their responsibility for calling the nation to its duties, its responsibilities to the people, should be a civic responsibility for the writer because of the particular tool that writing is."

"Our tool is communication in a form which must grip the attention of people. So that's why the writer finds himself and herself at the forefront. At least the writer is not alienated from the people."

Soyinka was invited to the 21st Session of the Governing Council of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi, Kenya in February where he gave a special reading of a poem he wrote for this occasion, in the memory of the 1998 bomb blast victims of Kenya and Tanzania.

He has been honored with the title of Goodwill Ambassador to UNESCO.

"I think people regard me as kind of a galvanizing factor and they invite me to come and ginger things up," he laughs.

During Earth Week, Wole Soyinka is travelling in Nigeria and Europe, thinking that, "Every day should be Earth Day."

At the UNEP Governing Council in Nairobi (from left) UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer, Canadian Environment Minister David Anderson, Wole Soyinka

During the six years spent in England, he was a dramaturgist at the Royal Court Theatre in London 1958 to 1959. In 1960, he was awarded a Rockefeller bursary and returned to Nigeria to study African drama. At the same time, he taught drama and literature at universities in Ibadan, Lagos, and Ife, where, since 1975, he has been professor of comparative literature. In 1960, he founded the theatre group, "The 1960 Masks" and in 1964, the "Orisun Theatre Company," in which he has produced his own plays and taken part as actor. He has periodically been visiting professor at the universities of Cambridge, Sheffield, and Yale.

During the civil war in Nigeria, Soyinka appealed in an article for cease fire. For this he was arrested in 1967, accused of conspiring with the Biafra rebels, and was held as a political prisoner for 22 months until 1969.

Soyinka has published 17 works of drama, fiction and poetry. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in 1986 as a writer who, the Nobel Committee said, "in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashions the drama of existence."

A bibliography of his writings and critical works, and excerpts from his works can be found at: http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/soyinka/biblio.html

Soyinka's Nobel Prize webpage is at: http://nobelprizes.com/nobel/literature/1986a.html