Is Wole Soyinka Deceased, A Question Posed by Ugoji Egbujo

At the ripe age of almost ninety-two, Wole Soyinka remains strong and razor-sharp, but his recent stance on the current presidency has raised eyebrows, particularly among the Obidients who have witnessed his linguistic agility and roar.

For the first time since 1960, Soyinka appears to be comfortable with a president's atrocities and sacrilege, sparking questions about whether the man has changed, given his bosom friend's presidency has been in place for three years.

During the 2023 elections, Soyinka claimed he was out of the country and out of touch, yet he still managed to criticize Peter Obi's running mate and supporters, while seemingly overlooking the thugs chasing Igbo voters from polling booths in Lagos.

Instead, Soyinka saw a headless mob of nattering nitwits spitting venom at elders and institutions, and he spotted fascism when Datti Ahmed dared speak of a stolen election and urged defiance against a captured judiciary.

When Peter Obi tried to assuage him, Soyinka beheld only a counterfeit, deeming Peter a fake for failing to rein in his supporters whose fiery passion didn't spare elders in the political street brawl on social media.

Until that point, Soyinka's sense of fairness and courage had never been publicly doubted, but his recent silence has raised concerns, particularly when Tinubu assumed office and his drastic policies unleashed untold economic hardship on Nigerians.

Nigerians urged Soyinka to speak out, but he replied that it was his custom to grant every new president a one-year honeymoon, and so the public waited, only to be met with silence even as Tinubu broke the calabash of a deity.

When the president assembled the fattest, most morally flabby cabinet in memory, silence ensued, and when reforms squeezed the masses while profligacy and moral decadence reigned in public office, still, Soyinka said nothing.

The honeymoon stretched on, and now Tinubu has been in office for three years, during which time hunger protesters have been brutally repressed, some of them children detained for months without trial, and peaceful protest is now treated as subversion.

An elected governor was temporarily yanked from office for political convenience, the largest road contract in Africa was awarded to the president's friend without due process, and critical portfolios have been concentrated in Yoruba hands in a brazen escalation of the tribalism Tinubu inherited.

Drug barons and a murderer received presidential pardons, and a convicted money-launderer who helped Abacha fleece the nation has been awarded the country's second-highest honour, all while Soyinka looked away.

Tinubu's allies have waged a slow, judiciary-assisted liquidation of the major opposition parties, and the country teeters on a precipice, yet Soyinka, who once wrote that a man dies in him who stays silent in the face of evil, has remained quiet.

Our ancestors advised that if fear or cowardice seals his lips, he should cover his head with a basket, shout, and run, but there is yet another option, as Soyinka once prescribed, he could pin the oppressor's picture in his toilet and spit at it every morning.

Soyinka is a deity, beyond reproach, having paid his dues in full, but the baton of resistance should long have passed to the young, and if the old lion still has breath to swat pesky mosquitoes, he should at least notice the elephant in the room.

When a deity chases rats while his house burns, he must be called out with love, and Soyinka's selective silence now sounds like complicity, particularly when he turned up to celebrate the Lagos-Calabar road, a project awarded promiscuously to the president's friend, calling himself "a sucker for roads".

The old Soyinka would have gone nowhere near that road, and it now seems that if Abacha had been sufficiently friendly to the sage, he might not have been such a villain after all, and his sins might have been overlooked, as blood, it seems, is thicker than water.

Who would have thought the activism of those days was not all altruism, and it is sad to watch even the gods prove no better than Brother Jero, as mere mortals no longer deem it irreverent to discuss the metamorphosis of Kongi.

The Interpreters of his silence have fallen speechless, and a Climate of Fear has been enthroned, with a Harmattan Haze descending on what promised to be an African Spring, as the youths are fleeing, and once a giant, Nigeria has become The Open Sore of a Continent, exporting economic refugees to every corner of the earth.

The "renewed hope" has become a ruse, and a Season of Anomie is upon us, as the nation is shuffling into the crypt of a one-party state, and the question remains, is this the second coming of King Baabu, and for how long can Soyinka place friendship above country.

We cannot allow him to disavow his oracular status, but it hurt that when he finally gathered the courage to speak, all he could muster was a complaint about Seyi Tinubu's convoy of cars, soldiers, and policemen, a president's son protected by a battalion in a country ravaged by bandits.

That should be outrageous, but when did the great Soyinka begin ignoring the disease to fret over the most insignificant symptom, as Seyi is not the problem, and the question remains, has the oracle grown timid, and should he come into the open.

Perhaps he has not noticed Wike cruising in his Rolls-Royce with police outriders, and is there any arm of this government that pretends to probity and integrity, as Obidients and Seyi are not good decoys, and the question remains, does Soyinka owe Tinubu a duty of loyalty and secrecy, or is this juju.

A man who spent his life taking personal risks for freedom, justice, and development cannot simply switch off, and Soyinka must finish strong against corruption and political banditry, as our people say when a man wakes can be his morning.

Soyinka must therefore Set Forth At this Dawn of looming one-party state, and he is not expected to lead protests, but as an oracle, he cannot stay home and mute and allow the country to go into labour tethered.

The same country that birthed The Chronicles From the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, and the Lion cannot forsake his Jewel, that precious name must be protected at all cost.