I discovered that I am not really real — Wole Soyinka

•Says: What National Theatre owes me
•Adds: Two of my performers nearly electrocuted

By Ishola Balogun

The National Theatre, Iganmu, Lagos, glittered with ceremonial expectation as the curtain rose on a night many hoped would rewrite a cultural century.

That monumental shell of brick and memory stood at the crossroads of past and future, awaiting its rebirth. President Tinubu arrived with a measured gait. Traditional rulers, bearing regalia that shimmered with ancestral history, occupied front rows beside a constellation of artists—actors, directors, playwrights, poets, choreographers, and festival curators—each one a thread in the theatre’s living tapestry.

The name Wole Soyinka, the Nobel laureate, was the centerpiece. Overtime, he argued that monuments alone cannot sustain living culture, challenging the renaming of roads and institutions after individuals. Now, it was his turn, the National theater renamed in his honour. The room hushed; even the auditorium’s aging rafters seemed to lean in to listen.

“Let me begin by confessing, and I think you know this, that I accepted this honour with mixed feelings.

“I am notorious for criticising many appropriations, public monuments by some of our past leaders which end up with naming everything after them. About 25 percent, whether they are buildings, roads in particular, institutions well and truly deserved. Having been guilty that other people do not merit this kind of monumental dedication and then I have to stand up in public to watch my name being put up as yet another appropriator; it just didn’t sink very well on me. But I thought it over and by the time I looked the history of theatre in this country, and I thought about my predecessors, Hubert Ogunde, Dola Dippo, Fiberisima, very little known, recognised and celebrated Oprah composers, music composers, and I said: somebody has to carry the can; and if a group of bankers came together, using our money in order to honour me, what is wrong with that?

“Also, I have a personal reason, nostalgia. I remember this building when it was first erected during the military regime, we call it the General’s hat because of the shape of the roof. Of course in the conception, there was what I call very little African architectural intelligence in it. In fact, it was an uprooted structure which the then Culture commissioner saw when he went to Bulgaria. It was not a real theater, it was a pale de spot, where people parade in honour of athletics just to show they are bringing in the people.

“I took one look at it and I said, okay, let’s take that. But I said: ‘make it one and a half times the size because Nigeria is bigger than the size of the country it was copied from.’ That is how this building came to be.

“We managed it, and we had FESTAC 77 in this very hall. It is different now completely, nothing like what that building became over the years, degraded to such an extent that when Lagos was celebrating its 50 years anniversary, and we looked for a hub, a centre of activities, we found out no other place than here. And when the governor and his team wanted to come back to take a second look, I said to them, you will go without me.

As the speech moved toward collective responsibility, Soyinka spoke of the banking consortium that funded the renaming, supported by a great ‘Conspirator’ in the President.

“So, these bankers I mentioned earlier have got together to make me eat my words. And if eating one’s words produces a morsel like this, then it is a very tasty set of words. I want to thank you and congratulate you for doing what I considered impossible.

“There is another reason why I should accept, I was already ambushed anyway; it is that they announced it, as usual, behind my back, as MKO Abiola would say: “they shaved my head in my absence.”

I would have raised a squad, but then, I decided this building owes me. One of the debts is that this building nearly electrocuted two of my actors. The roofs were leaking, that is how decrepit it has become. There were pools of water everywhere and of course there were electric wires; almost to say they were deliberately attached to those pools of water. I nearly lost two of my performers here when we came to perform. That was definitely one debt it owed me.

“Shortly after that, a group of artistes came to see me in the office in Lagos and said we want you to join us in protest against some business people wanting to take over the theatre; and that shouldn’t be allowed. I said to them: ‘you better prostrate and thank anybody that is fooling us to want to take over that place. Just go away and leave me alone.’. But again, that created a challenge to the banking consortium, because it was a different group.

“Having thrown those challenges, I said, I am old, I will accept it. The greatest reason was a very personal one. Over the years, I discovered that I am not really real, that I am a bit of a dramatic creation by some anonymous artistes. Everything around me seems to involve drama. If I speak, it’s drama and if I don’t, other people will still say it is drama.

“I was going to another festival a few months ago, on my birthday as a matter of fact. Something happened to me. How many of you here can claim to be kidnapped at 91 when going to a theatre festival? That’s another unique factor. I think this bank consortium did some research and looked around and said: This character is truly a dramatic piece of work himself, let’s name it after him.

They also thought, if the theatre dries up, if writers and directors choreographers and so on, if they run out of material and run dry, all they have to do is look at that name, go and create some theatre around him, you don’t have to work very hard. Having taken into consideration all these factors, I said to myself, it is one thing after all that does not cost me money personally, it is your name, already given to you and people want to borrow it, even without paying royalties, ahm!, it’s okay, they can have it.

“Finally, in all seriousness, I want to thank you for this honour, every one of you involved in it, including your president who is a great conspirator, he knows how to lay ambush here and there! It’s Okay. He’s netted another victim. I want to thank you Mr President.

“For all those who will be using this hall, let me remind you that I only represent a preoccupation, the commitment of Hubert Ogunde, not merely in this country but outside, like Sony Labou Tansi, Bate Besong from Cameroun, my hope is that with the recreation of this institution, we won’t be going all the way to Abu Dhabi to watch African theatre.

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