On the 13th of July 2024, the iconic Bard of Isara, Cicero of Ake, and the iconoclastic Oluwole Akinwande Babatunde Soyinka turned 90.

He was born in 1934 at Ake, the historic rock city of Nigeria’s Gateway State, Ogun.

The second in a row of seven children, he was born to the duo of Samuel Ayodele Soyinka(“Essay”), an Anglican minister, and educationalist, and Grace Eniola Soyinka(“Wild Christian”), a merchant, activist, and granddaughter of Reverend Canon J.J Ransome-Kuti.

The Ibadan -Leeds trained literary titan had his formative elementary and secondary educational training at Saint Peter’s Primary School, Ake, Abeokuta Grammar School, and Government College, Ibadan, respectively.

Kongi, as he is fondly called in the Nigerian literary circle, is an embodiment of trenchant political activism, and creative and performing arts.

For far too long, he has been an unrepentant, fearless but feared, consistent human rights campaigner and champion of good governance through creative arts and verbal engagements.

A thorn in the flesh of political rudderlessness and misadventure of oppressive, repressive, despotic, authoritarian, kleptomaniac regimes in Nigeria and continental Africa.

He is a manifest pain in the neck of political forlornness, criticizing “the cult of personality and government corruption” as well as the oppressive dictatorial boot and “the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it”.

Little wonder then that the maximum absolutist Nigerian dictator, the bespectacled Sanni Abacha pronounced a death sentence on him in absentia in 1997, when he had already fled for safety overseas through the “NADECO route”.

The revered Chair of Comparative Literature is indisputably an enigmatic polymath of many components of the discipline.

In the last seven decades, with the debut of “Keffi’s Birthday Treat”(1954), the creative writing genius has traversed heroically the African and global literary terrains with groundbreaking works, and, outstanding, yet dumbfounding accomplishments in plays, novels, short stories, memoirs, poetry, essays, films, and translations.

“The Lion & the Jewel”(1959), “Kongi’s Harvest (1964) as well and” Death &: the King’s Horseman”(1975) are his famous plays.

” Season of Anomy”(1973) and “A Tale of Two”(1958) are perhaps his notable novels and short stories, appropriately.

His prominent memoirs remain “The Man Died: Prison Notes”(1972),”Ake: The Years of Childhood”(1981), and “Ibadan: The Penkelemes Years 1945-1965(1989).

“Telephone Conversation “(1963),” A Shuttle In The Crypt”(1971), and “Mandela’s Earth and Other Poems”(1988) take pre-eminence in his poetry collection.

” Art, Dialogue & Outrage: Essays On Literature & Culture”(1988), “The Credo Of Being & Nothingness”(1991), and ” Beyond Aesthetics: Use, Abuse & Dissonance In African Art Traditions”(2019) are his thought-provoking essays of all times.

While ” The Forest Of A Thousand Demons: A Hunter’s Saga”(1968)(the English version of D.O Fagunwa’s “Ogboju Ode Ninu Igbo Irunmale”) and “In The Forest Of Olodumare”(2010)(Another English version of Fagunwa’s “Igbo Olodumare”) are his best translations of all ages.

WS, as his close associates refer to him, is undoubtedly a coat of many colours with strings of breathtaking laurels, honours, and endowments the world over.

He was the 1986 Nobel Prize Winner of Literature, the first African to be honoured in that category.

The UK-based Royal Society of Literature conferred Benson Award on him in 1990.

He was clad the Ambassador of Goodwill by UNESCO in 1994.

He won the Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award in 2009.

He emerged as the Lifetime Achievement Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in 2012.

In 2017, he won a Special Prize at the Europe Theatre Awards.

An indefatigable global citizen of African extraction, he was conferred with the prestigious national honour of Commander of the Order of the Federal Republic of Nigeria(CFR) by the gap-toothed Prince of the Niger, the sardonic evil genius, Ibrahim Babangida, in 1986.

He is also a recipient of Commander of the Order of the Italian Republic and an honorary citizen of New Orleans, Houston(US), Montpellier, and Haiti, along with others.

The literary legend remains unquestionably a foremost cross-continent highly productive and accomplished academic of all climes.

He had taught and occupied professorial Chair in top-rated universities in Africa, Europe, and America.

These included Ibadan, Ife, Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, Yale, Emory, Duke, Montpellier, Loyola Marymount, New York and Nevada, amongst others.

A charismatic man of letters extraordinaire and a great inspiration to many generations.

His literary classics have inspired many a shining literary star in Nigeria and beyond.

These include Niyi Osundare, Femi Osofisan, Odia Ofeimun, and many others.

This literary luminary and pride of Africa is undeniably a towering playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist of immense dimension on the continent.

Indeed, the corpus of African literature in particular, and global literature in general is incomplete without his celebrated literary classics.

Neither is the chronicle of literature on the continent and world over complete without making earned reference to him.

He has etched his name in gold in a deserved literary hall of fame for his”wide cultural perspective and…poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence” and promoting African heritage, literary scholarship as well as “freedom of expression, media and communication”.