Nobel laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka, has said Nigerians are
still managing to eke out a living despite the bleak realities confronting the
country.
Soyinka spoke during an interview with the Cable News
Network monitored by our correspondent.
Commenting on the ironic title for his first novel in 48
years, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, he said things
happened around one as one grew up, witnessing the degrading of dream and
environment in one’s society and on the continent.
He explained that for him, the issue had been an arduous
journey, adding, “It has reached such a stage, I found intuitively, that only
prose fiction can handle things that have been bubbling up inside me.”
He said the title came after some people some years ago
conducted a poll which placed Nigeria among the top four happiest nations in
the world.
The playwright noted, “That thing has been with me, in my
head. I asked, ‘Who are these people? What do they know? What have they seen?
What have they experienced in Nigeria that they make such an attribution?’ That
title really has been waiting to answer that claim in many ways. When you look
at the surroundings, everything is the opposite and yet, Nigeria is not a
complete disaster.
“People still manage to eke out a living not only a living
but to some extent a dignified and satisfied living. I think it’s not surface
appearance of contentment or making the best of a really bad job, insisting
that no matter what life must go on… It’s that which needed to be, quote and
unquote, celebrated in addition to the bleak actualities.”
The elder statesman further said he took the decision to
change his former relationship if Donald Trump was elected president of the
United States despite “being literally an enemy of decency and humanity’’ and
his blatantly discontent for non-white humanity.
He stated, “I never really totally turned my back on the
United States. I mean how could one? We have many Nigerians there, to start
with. When I stroll through the streets of the United States, I sometimes think
the United States is an extension of Nigeria, that it’s part of our diaspora.”
That’s not an easy decision but it was inevitable.”
Commenting on the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature awarded to
Tanzanian novelist, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Soyinka said his immediate statement
after the announcement was “let the African tribe expand wherever situated.”
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