I grew up with Lagos ‘sounds and sights’, says Soyinka

Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, speaks in Lagos, Nigeria, this year.

 Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, on Thursday said he grew up not only with the ‘sounds and sights’ of Lagos but also with its smells.

Soyinka said this in a statement titled, “A response to the Eko Foundation latest,” which he issued on Thursday in response to a newspaper advertorial by the foundation titled, “Soyinka’s fallacy and perversion of historical facts.”


The social critic also described as ignorant a claim by the group that he had no family house in Lagos.

Eko Foundation had objected to the choice of Soyinka as the Chairman of the Planning Committee for the 50th Anniversary of Lagos State by Governor Akinwunmi Ambode.

The organisation in the advertorial published on Thursday had described the choice of Soyinka for the role as “an insult to the collective psyche of a people who cherish their history and are saddened that a stranger has been chosen to chair the golden anniversary celebrations of their state.”

But Soyinka in a statement responding to the foundation said, “Here now is one minor footnote from history. In one of their paid advertisements, the EKO Foundation stated that the Soyinka had no family house in Lagos. This is a statement born of ignorance. Allied to that is the claim that Wole Soyinka does not know the “sounds and sights” of Lagos.

“I’m afraid that is a sweeping claim with no deductive basis. I grew up not only with the sounds and sights, but also the smells of Lagos. I smelt Lagos at its most rancid when my father was building the family house at Ebute Meta, on Franklin Street, which was then nothing but swampland, occupied by overfed mosquitoes and mudskippers.

“Even after completion, we continued to fish out mudskippers and sprats from the living room anytime it was flooded – which was every rainy season. In short, my family was one of the pioneer developers of that former swampland, now a flourishing sector of Yaba/Ebute Meta.

“By the way, at that time, my mother had her shop and temporary residence in Agarawu Street, a stone’s throw from the palace at Iga Iduganran, the heart of Lagos.’’

According to him, he will not dream of declaring, or even insinuating, that Lagosians are ignorant about their own state, not with such luminaries as his friend from schooldays, Chief Femi Okunnu.

He added, ‘‘I meant it however when I claimed that there are aspects of Lagos about which even Lagosians themselves are ignorant, just as there are aspects of Ogun State, where I am undisputed indigene, of which I am ignorant. I make new discoveries every day, some of them revelations by total strangers – even mere birds of passage. That is a general statement on the limitations of human awareness, not open to dispute.’’

Soyinka, who expressed ‘sorry’ for his failure to write about Lagos – in the manner of Ake, Ibadan and Isara, however, noted that one could not write about everything and everywhere that had contributed to one’s development as a human being, a citizen, and a writer, especially when excellent work had been done in that direction by scholars like Prof. Michael Echeruo, whom he said he singled out for an obvious reason that he is a non-Lagosian.

He added, “A Lagos commemoration is the issue, let us remember, not the individuals who write about, or respond positively to an invitation to preside over the celebration of such a daunting heritage, only to become most embarrassingly, its distracting issue. My off-the-cuff remark at the VISION OF THE CHILD event was not intended to prolong a pointless discussion, but to caution against the human failing of presuming to know it all.

“Oh, I nearly forgot: two or three years ago, the family took a decision to sell the family house in Franklin Street so as to raise funds for the renovation of its replacement in Osolake Street, same Ebute Meta sector. That house also has a minor history which might be of interest to the EKO Foundation.

“During FESTAC 1977, when I was invited to produce a spectacle, any event at all, to round off FESTAC, which had generated quite a number of disasters, I threw open the Osolake house as a hospitality recourse for participating African writers and artistes and from the Diaspora where they could, and did enjoy “Ogun State” hospitality. Presiding over their comfort throughout, was my helpless conscript, the family matriarch – the “Wild Christian” – from the pages of AKE. And now, can I get back to work, please?”