Acceptance Speech by Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, on Receiving the Fonlon-Nichols Award (2000)

(Extracted from the African Literature Association (ALA) Bulletin of Spring 2000, No 2, Vol 26, pp. 17-18).

After poetry there must be no prose. I know I listened to poetry because there was a lot of license in Niyi Osundare’s presentation. And why not? It’s an occasion for celebration. Literature, the arts, creativity, any opportunity to present the arts in any way, or a facet of them, is for me an occasion for celebration. So you are allowed all the licenses you want. Take even more time than you want. I loved it. Thank you so much Niyi. And I do not want to cast a pall on an occasion of celebration but I have to tell you that this event, this award, for me, comes at a very poignant moment.

I am very glad that Niyi mentioned earlier our late colleague who was murdered by Sanni Abacha and his gang – Ken Saro-Wiwa, and eight others. It so happens that in a week’s time, I think, less than a fortnight, finally his remains will be exhumed, together with his eight companions, and will be properly interred in his homeland, among his own people, the Ogoni. It seems to me, therefore, that it’s almost as if this gathering of creative people, of believers in the liberty of creativity, the rights of humanity, it’s almost as if, in a very serendipitous way, this event has been brought together to mark, to celebrate his passage among us and to note the event of his being properly laid to rest among his ancestors.

A very moving, a very touching event happened to me in Bavaria this last year when I was masochistic enough to accept to talk in that frozen, in those frozen wastes around November or December. But I was impelled to go there by a young group of very enthusiastic students - you call them high school students, secondary school students - who happened to have been very much interested in African literature and who, for quite a while, have developed a tradition of inviting writers, artists to come talk to them.

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