Soyinka And The Unknown Young Man By Niran Adedokun – TheNigerialawyer

By Niran Adedokun

Reactions to Monday’s incident between Prof Wole Soyinka and an
unidentified young man on an airplane are typically
Nigerian-impulsive, emotional and clearly devoid of rigour.

A nation cannot grow beyond the thoroughness of its people’s
contemplation. For it is from deep thoughts about conditions around
a people that vision is born and as the good book says, a people
without a vision are going nowhere. This is why it is a happy thing
that Soyinka, the good man of letters, has not joined the partisan
mobs that have taken on the war that they have no business in.

Knowing a bit of the Soyinka’s deviant and non-conformist
tendencies, it would be surprising that the Nobel laureate himself
does not nurse some admiration for the young, who chose not to be
persuaded by tradition and the crowd of star-struck people who
urged him to allow Soyinka to be, even though the old man had
seemingly usurped the seat rightly allocated to this unidentified
young man.

No one knows this man’s age, but social media accounts suggest
that he could be something between 20 and 30 years. At about the
same age several decades ago, Soyinka led some of his friends to
form the Pyrates Confraternity.

That organisation still exists today and it is carrying on the
ideals of its founding fathers. And what are those ideals?

The website of the National Association of Seadogs, which is the
alternate name of the body, says the confraternity was “formed in
1952 by seven undergraduates of the University College, Ibadan, in
response to the prevailing predisposition, at the time, of notions
of class privilege, elitism and indifference to the social
realities of the nation, Nigeria, especially by students of middle
class upbringing, scions of business tycoons and colonial
aristocracy.”

Not just at that youthful phase of his life, Soyinka has from
time to time stood up for the rights of people across the country
by confronting constituted authority and showing the way not to
stand down when it concerns your belief. There is no way that sort
of man would not realise that he should not insist on a seat that
was not assigned to him on the airplane. Little wonder, he invited
the young man to take his seat, regardless of whatever might have
inspired his initial decision to take the window seat.

Now, the concern of Mr Tonye Cole, who shared the incident with
the world, was more about the young man’s disregard for Soyinka’s
advanced age rather than the non-recognition of his achievement as
a globally acclaimed writer. The assumption is that Prof Soyinka
and the generation after him, which Cole apparently belongs to,
would have quietly taken the aisle seat and allowed any old man or
woman (if that was the case), to take the window seat! A very valid
posture, no doubt; but this is where a disconnect pops at us.

In the final paragraph of his post, Cole writes: “I couldn’t
understand how we got to this point where we no longer have respect
for elders, even if we are so ignorant of the great global
personalities in our midst. Is it too much to ask that an elderly
man be allowed to remain in a seat allotted to you in the same
business class cabin and the same row?” With this statement, the
business mogul unwittingly indicts his generation for failing in
their roles as parents and leaders of the country.

The first question that stares at you is exactly why should any
young Nigerian not know who Soyinka is? Even if they are not
literature students, who should have read one of his numerous
literary works before they conclude their school certificate, they
would have learnt from their study of the history of Nigeria that
Soyinka is the most honoured writer Nigeria has produced. But so
many young people do not truly know Soyinka or anyone like him who
is not a pop star throwing handkerchief and socks at thousands of
intoxicated fans sipping from the ecstasy of increasingly seductive
music. Nigeria’s world has moved from that of ideas into that of
mammon and the desperation to acquire it.

Mr Cole then wondered “how we got to this point where we no
longer have respect for elders…” So one should ask how many of the
parents in Cole’s generation bother to instill the kind of respect
he is demanding from this young man in their own children. Can he
vouch that his own children would give up their business class
seats for an elderly person, whether he is renowned or not?

Events that followed Mr Cole’s post have revealed that the
problem with Nigeria is deeper than the fact that a younger man may
not know the first black Nobel laureate for literature or show
respect for an older man. It has shown that Nigerians, young and
old, have no sense of what is right and wrong, dissipate energy on
inanities and are never honest enough to look in the mirror and
deal with whatever they see.

For example, offering a seat to an elderly person is not so much
of an act of respect as it is an act of civility. This is why the
western countries, (which we fool ourselves to believe have no
respect for age) run systems that give institutional priority to
older people, the physically challenged and pregnant women in all
public places and in government policies.

There is the story of one of the earliest American Presidents,
who during the selection of his cabinet, was said to have refused
to nominate one of his closest associates.

On enquiries from those who thought this associate was a
definite choice, the new President was said to have recounted an
incident during his campaign when this associate failed to give his
seat for a manifestly older woman until he, the candidate offered.
With that, he doubted the compassion and humanity of this associate
and did not think he was good for public office. Compassion and
humanity are, therefore, the essential principles behind this idea
of giving up seats for persons who seem more vulnerable.

Sadly, compassion is not a virtue that Nigerians have in any
significant measure. So, even if all Nigerians pride themselves as
champions of respect for the elderly, the fact that compassion has
increasingly become a scarce consideration reduces respect (which
is a universal and reciprocal principle) to the background.

And here is when Mr Cole’s question, as to when Nigeria became
like this, becomes relevant. It is at the point that materialism
started to take over the soul of the country — when leaders of the
country have chosen to appropriate the resources of state to
themselves and their families without a care for the masses of the
people. It is the time when crass acquisitiveness has become the
driving force of all agents of socialisation in the country.

At the level of government, the education of children is perhaps
the least important issue in contemplation currently. Children who
can go to school and learn under circumstances that emasculate what
innate sense of compassion might be in them. They are tutored under
inhuman conditions, such as classes without roof or chairs, by
frustrated teachers who transfer aggression, and go home to parents
who have turned into money mongers without very little time left to
inculcate the real essence of life into their children.

Another unfortunate leg of Nigeria’s contemporary social malaise
is the failure to come to terms with the fact that the country is a
conglomeration of people, ideas and values, such that it is immoral
to judge others by what you consider to be your own standards,
especially when you have failed to understand theirs or find a
common value system that unites the country. This story, which Prof
Soyinka himself dismissed like it never happened, would not have
taken the pathetic, divisive and ethnic dimensions it took earlier
this week.

So where is this leading to? Nigeria needs to find a soul as a
matter of urgency. When it finds it, it will give attention to the
well-being of all its citizens, train its children to love humanity
and treat people right, deal fairly with all its citizens without
prejudice and re-evaluate its value system, such that what is right
will be right and what is wrong will be wrong, regardless of who
you are.

Adedokun [email protected]^[1]

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