NobEL
Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka yesterday, described Nigeria as a nation that
has been brutalised and traumatised in so many ways, stressing the need to
utilise culture as a political weapon to win the battle against what he
described as activities of nihilists. Soyinka spoke during a press conference
heralding the Lagos at 50 celebration held at Freedom Park, Lagos. His words:
“Culture is a political weapon. In certain circumstances, it is more of a
political weapon than at other times. I believe that this country was never in
greater need of the aggressiveness of cultures. ‘’If we had salves of this
country destroyed by some Philistines, who considered themselves messianic, but
in actual fact lunatic, lunatic movement, which hate education and culture,
their mission, existence is simply to destroy the imagination of humanity and
its products. ‘’They kill children, abduct children simply because those
children are sent to places where they can expand their horizon, expand their
minds and create, use their hands, heads and voices, they take them away, lock
them away in some forest, abuse them, use them, defile them and treat the rest
of the nation with total contempt and arrogance. ‘’They are negativists,
nihilists and when events like that hit community, a people, they have a
responsibility to themselves and to their future to assert, to build,
reinforce, augment, to enhance that very objective that remains an object of
hate for them. ‘’This nation has been brutalised, traumatised in many ways, but
some of us flag the imagination to comprehend and to empathise with. And so one
of the big motivations of my again getting involved in this event, is because
of what has been happening to this nation and not only this nation, it is
world-wide war, which is a war between culture and philistinism, nihilism. “And
for me, we are part of that war and we should be at the forefront of that war
and what is our weapon? Cultural weapon of course. ‘’The soldiers will do their
bit, the politicians will do their bit, but we are all engaged in a war against
nihilism. And so we are all engaged in a war against nihilist.
‘’When we talk
about political issues, it goes beyond unemployment, lack of opportunities,
deterioration of our entire community of all those involved, beyond the failure
for government to even cater for the basic material needs of the people and
there is something called spiritual needs and at the core of spiritual needs is
culture. ‘’And those who abuse us, those who hate us, those who destroy culture
in any corner of this nation should be countered by the cultural insistence and
the cultural aggression of the rest of the nation. “One thing stands at the
centre and that’s imagination, that’s the only thing that stops stagnation. And
I believe politically we are all against stagnation. So, see this as being
participation in the great socio-cultural battle that the world is waging
against the nihilism.”
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