Soyinka Seeks Nigeria’s Next Nobel Laureate

President Olusegun Obasanjo’s 2015 seriocomic commentary on Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka (Kongi) as a man habitually hunting for guinea fowl and fine wine, the writer has lately revealed that his life isn’t all about wining and dining. Obasanjo (OBJ) had said during a spat between them that he could always turn to Kongi if he wanted wine and guinea fowl. He said: He (Soyinka) is surely a better wine connoisseur and a more successful aparo (guinea fowl) hunter than a political critic…If I want somebody to give me the best wine, one of the people I will go to is Wole Soyinka and I know he has a taste for good wine…’’

He pictured the writer returning from an expedition with a blood-splattered bag slung over his shoulders and a heavy keg in one hand along with a gun he’d have used to take down big flying creatures for dinner, which would be washed down with frothy, fresh and fully fermented palm wine. There’s no record the man of letters obliged the man of the barracks this wish of dish of bird meat and wine.

Now, nearly a decade after OBJ’s outburst, Kongi is leading us into a new pastime of his: a search for the next Nigerian Nobel Laureate in Literature. He was the winner in 1986, the first African, opening the way for other writers on the continent: Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt, 1988), Nadine Gordimer (South Africa, 1991), John Coetzee (South Africa, 2003) and Abdulrazak Gurnah (Tanzania, 2021).

In the space of 12 years, two South Africans bagged the prize. So Soyinka, wondering why a track a Nigerian charted hasn’t admitted another compatriot some 38 years after, says he’s on the quest for one. He is turning 90 on July 13, 2024. But looking beyond, he says he hopes that before his centennial anniversary he’d take a trip to Stockholm, Sweden, the home of the prize jurors. There he wishes to “celebrate another Nigerian winning the Prize for Literature”. He told a TV station in Lagos recently: “…Before I’m 100, I’ll be going to Stockholm to celebrate another Nigerian (Nobel Literature Laureate)…” He believes that the giant of Africa harbours “remarkable competitions between Nigerian writers, males and females and writers in the African continent.” Soyinka adds that “Nigeria is flooded with talents in the Arts… to win the Nobel Prize.”