Prof. Wole Soyinka, has said that the late Ghanaian diplomat and poet,
Kofi Awoonor and himself could have been together at the Storymoja/Hay
Literature Festival held in Nairobi, Kenya. He said he was invited to
the same festival but could not attend. Awoonor was killed by terrorists
last Saturday at the Westgate Shopping Mall shooting in Nairobi.
Soyinka said two commitments: a public conversation with a very brave
individual, Karima Bennoune, an Algerian national, whose trenchant
publication – Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here, and the annual conference
of international investigators in Tunis, were responsible for his
inability to attend the festival. He said: “My absence was particularly
regrettable, because I had planned to make up for my failure to turn up
for the immediate prior edition. Participant or absentee however, this
is one edition we shall not soon forget. It was at least two days after
the listing of Kofi Awoonor among the victims that I even recollected
the fact that the Festival was ongoing at that very time. “With that
realisation came another: that Kofi and I could have been splitting a
bottle at that same watering hole in between events and at the end of
each day. My feelings, I wish to state clearly, did not undergo any
changes. The emotions of rage, hate and contempt remained on the same
qualitative and quantitative levels,” he added. Soyinka spoke in Lagos
yesterday during a memorial reading session tagged Humanity and Against
and held in honour of the late Ghanaian poet. He described the late
Awoonor as a passionate African who gave primacy of place to values
derived from his Ewe heritage. “That, in turn, means that he was
thoroughly imbued with the spirit of ecumenism towards other systems of
belief and cultural usages – this being the scriptural ethos that
permeates belief practices of most of this continent. We mourn our
colleague and brother, but first, we denounce his killers, the virulent
sub-species of humanity who bathe their hands in innocent blood,” he
added. Renowned poet, Prof JP Clark explained why Soyinka and himself
were not at the funeral of the late Chinua Achebe at Ogidi, Anambra
State, blaming it on politicians that hijacked the funeral. He noted
that Prof Soyinka and himself did not sit and plot action on whether or
not to attend Achebe’s funeral in Ogidi. “Politicians hijacked the
Achebe’s funeral. I said to myself, if there is life after death, Achebe
would be laughing at the politicians. So, writers could not have found a
space in Achebe’s funeral. From the President to the Governors, they
hijacked it,” he noted. Clark said critics might be wondering why a
memorial is being held in honour of Awoonor in Lagos unlike when Chinua
Achebe died. President of the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA),
Prof Remi Raji, who read from his collection of poems, The Fire Next
Time, said of the late Ghanaian poet: “African literature has indeed
lost an influential voice. The name, Kofi Awoonor, was very present in
our minds as young students. Though I never met him in person, his
writings have been influential. The ANA has sent a condolence letter to
the Ghana authority.
