A pilgrimage to Soyinka’s home in Ijesha forest

By Theophilus Abbah

The two coaster buses that conveyed our team from the charming and luxurious Conference Hotel in Abeokuta sailed and scaled across an overhead bridge, snaked through the noisy Itoku market in Kuto area, famous for merchandize in Yoruba traditional adire. The buses sped up the hill on the dark, glossy, smoothly tarred and well-paved Kemta Road that wound through modern bungalows and high-rise structures occupied by educational institutions, supermarkets, patent medicine stores, eateries, artisans’ outlets, ubiquitous churches, and peddlers of almost every conceivable trade that ease life for Abeokuta residents.

We were members of the Media and Journalism Cohort of the MacArthur Foundation programme in Nigeria and had arrived in the renowned Egbaland  on November 6, 2024 on a two-day soul-searching and forward-looking strategic meeting. Without pilgrimage to Soyinka’s residence, our tour of Abeokuta would be incomplete. We had heard colourful tales about the serene forest home of Nigeria’s literary iroko, Wole Soyinka. Stories could be fascinating, but personal experience would leave a more enduring impression of the unusual residence on the human mind. Neither enchanting tales nor snappy video clips on television could quench our yearning for Soyinka’s home.

I had reset my mind for a long journey, perhaps, for an hour, across woods, rivers, farms, cattle grazing fields and distant hamlets. Too soon, however, the vehicles turned from the tarred street, off Kemta Road, and drove furiously on a path, a glorified footpath, in between trees and shrubs, anxiety and silence, expectations and suspense.

AI-generated artistic impression on the path to Soyinka’s forest home

As we penetrated the jaw of the narrow path that tore through the firmly knitted forest, we spotted two public notices slammed on about four feet by four feet thick board. They were pinned to two weather beaten trees. Written in a style that evokes literary shock, both notices foretell the pains that awaited uninvited people, vehicles, and animals who strayed into this forest. One of the interdictions warns that cows would be hanged, a punishment that is ordinarily reserved for criminals; while uninvited vehicles would be eaten up, an apparent resort to personification that sets the mind to wonder how such disobedient vehicles would be chewed up and swallowed and flushed down the human throat.

The zooming sound from the buses, as they struggled to conquer the ridges on the bush path, competed with songs from crickets that tore through the silence. Now in the belly of the forest, we noticed tall grasses that had shed their leaves and begun to grow fresh ones. We identified aged trees that may know the ancestors of those who live in the forest and the ancient practices that may have faded with the passage of years.  We drove across a stream on its course under a bridge of iron and concrete. The tires of our buses crushed dried shrubs being swept around in the mild wind. We admired fruit trees that may have fed the people for many years. We noticed stones of diverse sizes, and domestic animals fending for food in the forest.

Surrounded, or, better put, secured, by assorted trees, the building evoked peace and tranquility

In less than 10 minutes we had completed the journey of hours of expectations. The promised land, the forest, did not overstretch our anxiety. My sense of forest was a location of wild trees and beasts separated from residential areas; a distant bush that may not be accessible by motor cars, except by the use of motorcycles and bicycles. From my own experience, our forest is our past where our forebearers had lived many centuries ago, which has now turned into fear-instilling grooves,  solemn divine altars and burial places of our ancestors. All this natural atmosphere escorted us on this journey to the Autonomous Republic of Ijesha, the unconventional home of Professor Wole Soyinka, the 90-year-old winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986.

The lone structure, built of burnt bricks, a one-story building with elaborate lounges in the basement and first floor, is the totality of the community of the Republic of Ijesha, the Nobel Laureate’s ancestral home. Surrounded, or, better put, secured, by assorted trees, the building evoked peace and tranquility. The environment was an escape from the humidity, the sweltering and noisome crowd that lined up all the way from Abeokuta to this isolated Republic.

Visitors inside the premises of Soyinka’s home

A lone dark Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV), parked on the lawn in front of the modest structure, gave an inkling that the professor was at home and probably expecting this delegation. But it reflected Soyinka’s lifestyle, different from the lifestyles of  other famous celebrities, whose places of residences are rather hamlets populated by extended family members, hangers-on, praise singers, idle aides, and domestic workers that enforce annoying protocols which visitors must obey before meeting their host. Such eye-services charge the residences of celebrities with a flurry of activities. With only one vehicle parked in the premises, one could guess that If Soyinka was at home, only very few persons would be keeping him company.

As we streamed out of our buses in a single line and spread out to bask in the soothing breeze, we noticed a kitted private security man, a middle-aged man who may have been alerted about our visit. But he seemed taken by surprise, perhaps, by our mix of young and gray-haired folks.

The wooden images were so many  that it was difficult to imagine how the professor may have crafted them

However, many of us were unprepared for the visuals that confronted us as we climbed the staircase to the lounge on the first floor. A mystic man carved out of some wood. A wrapper is tied around his waist; he holds an instrument that looks much like a trumpet; and his smiling eyes tend to scan us one after another.  But we were to encounter more and more of the beings in carved woods: a maiden carrying an elaborate braided hairstyle, on her knees and bearing a basket of fruits; a man wearing a Yoruba cap, carved from wood but also standing on a wood, looking aggressive in his bold Yoruba tribal marks; a man covered in cowries from shoulder to feet. A man wearing a glowing crown, decked with beads, and sitting on a round earth mound, holding an object on a wooded stool. Male and female figures in exaggerated nudity.

The carved images were so numerous that I wondered if they represented Soyinka’s craftsmanship, or proved that is actually a collector of artworks.  But the wooden images were so many  that it was difficult to imagine how the professor may have crafted them with his bare hands; he may have had paid several sculptors to produce them in their numbers for decorating every corner of his building. Whether he carved them or paid brilliant hands to do the work for him, the wooden images pointed to Soyinka’s much-talked about respect for the Yoruba traditional culture, totems and their significance. In all his writings, Soyinka identified with Yoruba tradition and cosmology.

The visitors listening to Soyinka at his forest residence

The wooden images, well-tended and placed at every wing of the unconventional and large structure, were enough proof of his faith in the tradition of his ancestors. In interviews that Soyinka reflected on his own spiritual odyssey, he talked about his early days in the children choir in the local church and how his mother, whom he described as a ‘wild Christian’ enthusiastically worked on him to become a great Christian. In spite of those early interactions with Christianity, Soyinka would, without mincing words, comfortably express his disposition toward the Yoruba traditional religion and how his worldview about life, death, and beyond was intertwined with the received spiritual experiences of his Yoruba ancestry.

As we admired the artefacts, furniture and unique interior design, Soyinka walked in, almost surreptitiously, through a corridor. For those of us who would encounter him for the first time, the air of simplicity around him was a sharp contrast with the difficulty we encountered while reading his novels and plays in secondary schools or as undergraduates. My personal experience with his play, Death and the King’s Horseman, in my undergraduate examination is unforgettable. The meaning of each dialogue was rendered obscure in the admixture of sagacious sayings, abstraction, and the assemblage of imageries of diverse fields in each dialogue.

When he walked in, Soyinka’s snowy hairs gave him out

Of the 84 of us who wrote the examination in Literature, only I attempted the questions set from Death and the King’s Horseman. But that was not because I was brilliant; I was a little bit clever, using a strategy that has been perfected by today’s students. In preparation for each examination, we practised responses to many past questions, expecting luck to smile at us. For me, it was fortuitous. Among the past questions I had sampled, and almost memorized, few were repeated from Soyinka’s text. Proudly, I tackled the questions and earned a good mark, perhaps, for being very brave to have answered questions set from the impossible Death and the King’s Horseman.

When he walked in, Soyinka’s snowy hairs gave him out, but his frame, now more slender than robust, attested to the reality that old age had crept and eaten deep into his physique. However, for a 90-year-old, his voice was unshaken, like that of a brave youth. His apt diction, the flexibility with which he connected and discussed contemporary social and political issues, showed how clear-minded he was at this age, in spite of the number of books churned out of his unrelenting creative mind.

Walking into Soyinka house in the forest

Unlike the tradition of reserving a seat for the host in the living room of prominent Nigerians, there was no such restriction at the expansive lounge on the first floor of Soyinka’s forest home. We were permitted to make ourselves comfortable on any available cushion chair. We did not need to move any member of our team from any seat for Soyinka to sit down.

After those exciting moments when we exchanged pleasantries with the literary icon, we noticed an embarrassing vacuum, caused by the absence of an agenda for the visit. Perhaps, our mission was to savour the unique experience of meeting the literary giant in person. But Soyinka was aware that journalists usually had questions in the sleeves to fire at prominent figures. He must have gathered enough momentum for the encounter.

“Yes, you’re welcome,” Soyinka responded, apparently expecting this team of journalists to begin to interrogate him.

In a creative manner, a member of our team sensed the emptiness in the atmosphere, and asked Soyinka what the literary giant’s impression was of the contemporary media in this age, compared to the roles the media played in the colonial, post-colonial era and during military rule in Nigeria, the days Soyinka was literarily and politically active.

To him, professional journalists needed to reclaim their industry from so-called citizen journalists

The question ignited the passion for brainstorming and critical discourse in Soyinka, and he delved into it with emphasis that gave the impression that he anticipated it. Instead of evaluating the performance of the traditional media, the obvious referent of the question, Soyinka elevated his response to the media ecosystem in the country, a system that is riotous, foggy, illusive, and confusing. To him, professional journalists needed to reclaim their industry from so-called citizen journalists who become publishers as a result of their access to smartphones and laptops. A situation in which anyone and everyone could write or broadcast contents that are not refined; contents overflowing with falsehood, impersonation, propaganda, slander… that reach thousands of persons, to Soyinka, was not just dangerous for the country, but bad for the media in Nigeria.

Soyinka shocked the audience by narrating his own bitter anecdote. Some cybercriminals had used his face and voice in a video for marketing so-called herbs that cure cancer. He was unaware of the scam that had spread on the Internet until a woman who believed the DeepFake video made an online payment for the supposed cancer-curing solution, but did not receive the product after several weeks. The victim, through resilience, sought and found for someone that knew Soyinka and complained to the person, who reached out to Soyinka to enquire about the video that portrayed him as promoting herbs that cured cancer. Perplexed at the allegation, Soyinka searched for the video that impersonated him; he was amazed at how his image and voice had been cloned to produce the video for marketing a product he knew nothing about.

Another view of Soyinka’s premises

For Soyinka, journalists who are genuine, ethical and professionals must not dismiss the activities of criminals who now parade themselves on social media as journalists. Authentic journalists and publishers must find a way of exerting themselves in the media space to obliterate the activities of unprofessional and citizen journalists who pollute the space with their criminal use of the Internet.

But it was not only the social media that angered Soyinka. Even the traditional media has put him on edge at different times. Soyinka told the story of when he read the headline of a story generated from an interview he granted a reputable newspaper in Nigeria. He marveled and wonder at the headline that did not align with the contents and spirit of the interview he granted. He said he was misquoted as having escaped death in Kenya in the 2013 mall attack that claimed the life of a poet and diplomat, Kofi Awonoor.

He [Soyinka] was amazed at how his image and voice had been cloned to produce the video for marketing a product he knew nothing about

Soyinka said the headline was not just mischievous and misleading.  It left him devastated for several days. Recasting what transpired, Soyinka said he had been invited to the Storymoja/Hay Literature Festival in Nairobi, Kenya, but was unable to attend due to his other engagements. Relating that to Awonoor’s death, Soyinka told the interviewer that, perhaps, if he had attended the event, Awonoor, who was his friend and attended the Festival, would have been in his company, and probably not at the mall that came under attack from terrorists in September 2013. To extent the meaning of what he told the journalist to the point of saying Soyinka escaped death was shocking to him.  In dealing with these and some other besetting challenges facing the media, Soyinka recommended constant dialogue, conferences, training, and solution-focused meetings, even if the situation is complex and difficult to tackle.

Perhaps, the consoling moment for investigative journalists in the interaction with Soyinka was when the Noble Laureate responded to a question on how he felt when his activism did not produce the desired reform in the Nigerian society. The participant who asked the question related Soyinka’s experience to what investigative journalists had complained about severally. After they must have exposed wrongdoings in the society, the authorities always would  fail to follow-up with the necessary judicial steps, and may rather leave journalists at the mercy of corrupt sharks in the bureaucracy and polity.

One of the things Soyinka claimed he would not repeat was to choose writing as a career

For Soyinka, investigative journalists must not feel infuriated or even defeated if government failed to act on their investigations. Like a writer, the duty of the investigative journalists, he said, was to expose the rot in the society, and that they should not have too high expectations from government to act on such reports. Journalists may never know how, who and when somebody would act on their investigation. Investigative reporters should be content with having their stories published.

Soyinka was asked to reveal the ‘two things you would never repeat if you had another 90 years, and two things you will do again if you had another 90 years to live.’ One of the things Soyinka claimed he would not repeat was to choose writing as a career. He would rather express his creativity in what he loved most – hunting. Soyinka’s pastime as a hunter is well-known, but, for his literary attainment on the global scene, it sounded unbelievable for him to have preferred hunting to writing. That response may be somehow hyperbolic, or like saying he loved the forest and the wild animals in them, the way he loved nature and hat to plant trees all around his forest of residence.

The second creative vocation he would devote more time to, if he had another lifetime, is Architecture. Though Architecture is studied in the university as a professional course, successful practitioners are those endowed with creativity. To demonstrated how passionate and committed he is to Architecture, Soyinka told his audience that he actually designed his ‘forest’ house.

Soyinka’s claim to love hunting more than writing may be considered to be in a manner of speaking, as he has not retired from writing. Few years to his 90^th birthday, Soyinka wrote a play, a fiction, whose inspiration came from the cruel and barbaric way Deborah Samuel was murdered in 2022 at Shehu Shagari College of Education in Sokoto.

Appalled by the gruesome murder of the young lady, the effrontery of one of her killers who showcased on the social media how he set fire to Deborah to burn her alive; and the failure of the authorities to bring anyone to justice, Soyinka went back to his desk to write a play that berates the society for failing to maintain the sacredness of the human life and descending so low into depravity.

In an earlier interview he granted TheNews magazine, Soyinka spoke about the book thus: “The idea of writing the play came about through the course I have been teaching outside [Nigeria]. The course is titled “Faith, Power and Ideology.”  And it has to do with the killing of Deborah Samuel, which is something that has obsessed me for quite a while. Not just the killing but the arrogant relegation of justice that followed. The failure and reluctance to prosecute those killers who are identified and filmed. And the fact that one of the killers was so contemptuous of justice that he could pose on the internet with a box of matches. That is what triggered that play.  I have used that episode in my classes. I have asked my students to ‘Google’ Deborah Samuel and see what is there. They couldn’t believe, by the way, that it happened.”

The time with him was a moment of enlightenment

The hour with Soyinka was an excursion into, not just his secluded home in Ijesha forest, but a foray into his creative thinking. The time with him was a moment of enlightenment, discernment, and inspiration.  As we filed out of the building, snatching the opportunity to take photographs, individually and in group, with Soyinka, we did so with the realization that we had made a once-in-a-lifetime pilgrimage, not just to Soyinka’s forest home, but also to the inner recess of a 90-year-old writer who does not give up.

Soyinka’s visitors listening to his viewpoints on the chaotic information ecosystem

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(1) ‘Blasphemy’: Two suspects on trial for Deborah Samuel’s murder set free – The Insight

(2) The Blood of Deborah Samuel Yakubu – The Insight

(3) Yobe: Rescued Christian Girl Vomits Concoctions in Church, Centre Issues Ultimatum – The Insight