An Open Letter To A Distressed Priest

By Wole Soyinka

My dear Reverend Aburo,you have reached out to me, and I feel moved by your entreaty. You urged me to say something, anything at all to silence the recent caterwauling – my own deliberate choice of words — by our familiar custodians and adjudicators of the public weal.

In reality? A bunch of hyper-active but clearly successful motley. I say “successful”, because they have succeeded in distracting you from your undoubtedly overstretched but urgent ministry – given the plight of Nigerian and other migrants in your current abode, I am touched by your effort to renew contact with this global migrant in pursuit of a common ground for communal understanding despite distances — political, religious, environmental – that, at least, is my summative reading.

Given the nature of some of the commentaries called up by “clicking on links” volunteered by others who share your concerns, even I admit that a total stranger, encountering such defamatory bilge, would believe that he or she had stumbled on a defining moment of life and death for an entire nation.

This orchestrated screech of sectarian desperation has been triggered off, apparently, by the refusal of this veteran of dissent to nourish the thrill famished component embedded in most of humanity, one that manifests itself through any number of emotive activities – soccer, boxing, wrestling extreme sports, and others. I shall quickly concede that it is not always negative or irrational.

The problem is – I have already spoken, so I do not know exactly where their problem lies. Is there any special language I have yet to discover, to make myself audible? Some newly invented jargon by the Tik-Tok generation and their elderly mouthers? Well, by making this response in the form of an Open Letter, I hope you will grant me the right to claim that I have made a positive move toward your earnestly posed and deeply appreciated entreaty. I repeat – I have already spoken, and clearly, only I remain inaudible, which is hardly surprising.

At this age, one tends to speak more and more to oneself, that being the most dependable, and rationally responsive listener one can hope for in a rapidly changing – some would even claim – disintegrating world. It is only to be expected that the occupiers of the little corner of that world, known as Nigeria, would prefer not to disintegrate with the rest, hence your proactive move, targeted at the human factor – that human factor and its contributory potential.

The human in us however demands Reciprocity – no, absolutely not material or even vocalised – laudatory or condemnatory. Perhaps the commonest, plain-speaking equivalent is also the most challenging and inspirational – Truth telling. The Truth shall make you free? Forgive my skepticism. Still, the process itself is perhaps the compacted message, so we need not despair. I have spoken, and now spoken through the literary format. Kindly consider this a preface, timed to catch the Independence delivery train. The full tract will surface within weeks – now that counts as a promise, unlike the slavering demands of peremptory but infantile impotents.

To avoid any disappointment, perhaps I should introduce myself – contextually. The CV is straightforward: I abhor dictation and hold slaves to such tendencies in deserved disregard. I reserve for myself the fundamental right of judgement in choosing what, when, how, and where I disseminate my ideas, only ensuring their accessibility.

Even the difference between peace time and conflict, for instance, demands different tempi of reaction and/or initiating commentaries.
Sounding off and other forms of ego indulgence, playing to the gallery etc. are made to “know their place” – at least in my catalogue of social relevance and priorities, and even exertion of civic worth.

Now my dear Reverend, before you become irritated with me for stating the obvious, kindly recall that this is exactly why I have chosen this Open-Letter format, and seized on the prospect of co-opting you as opportune vector. Like all other societies, ours is replete with both geniuses and morons, with thoughtful questers and the proverbial empty barrels, with compulsive Truth gospelers and – Liars! Most fortuitously, your entreaty comes as we approach the nation’s embarkation on the Birthday ceremonials of its existence.

Uncharacteristically, I shall join the chorus of well-wishers – I even have a Birthday present, it has been with me for a while but only now, thanks to you, have I been moved to begin its unwrapping! In the interest of the nation, and given the ecumenical umbrella that should define the religious ministry, I urge you to devote some special time of aggressive intensity to a specific spiritual disorder that plagues the dwellers of this land-mass in a frighteningly disproportion measure to all other nations I have ever visited, heard of, or studied in any depth.

Put simply, it is a disorder of moral deficiency that threatens to turn the nation into — a Republic of Liars! Now we move closer to Acknowledgements, a literary device that tends to be unavoidably personal, occasionally institutional and pietistic – you know – in the nature of….” firstly (or, finally) I give thanks to God the only Giver, from whom all things derive etc. etc… but always an attribution rendered in self-denial and humility. We follow literary tradition. Our major occupier of the Acknowledgement page and inspiration of this long letter is a literary work, a Memoir that provides the major springboard for a long overdue exercise, whose timing and circumstances of birth could not be more apt.

The work presumes to be a work of repentance, burnished resolve, a confessional by a reformed “lost sheep”, seeking redemption for a past of notoriety, predatoriness, indeed criminal existence. I appear as a testifier of vested interest – let us first get that out of the way, in the pursuit of objectivity:“Yet he (Wole Soyinka) vowed not to critique Tinubu until after a year in office. The year has passed, and still, Nothing….Nothing? Repeated ad nauseam with smirking, magisterial variations! Nothing! But perhaps this is one of those Artificial Intelligence identity clones. The contradicting ‘Nothing’ is however on record, widely reported, yet our “redeemed” voice of the people clambers between the publishers’ impressive hard covers, festooned with narcissistic photo display to undermine, even evaporate reality as conveyed in abundance, through the same medium of ink, paper, and cyber, and in real time and details.

What are we expected to make of the following? An endorsement letter and certificate of good governance between old friends?

Misplaced Priorities: As detailed by Vanguard, Soyinka sarcastically quipped that the president could have simply sent his son’s heavy guard rather than deploying military assets to handle regional issues like the Benin Republic uprising. Given the environment of Great Expectations, vows, pledges and non-fulfillment, it is necessary to make myself clear – I owe no one. Neither before the most ethical tribune the world has ever conceived of, nor in any known legalistic tribune. Elections seem to make even the most retentive controversialists suddenly brain porous. They jettison all normally adopted checks, restraints, even the language of basic decency for the thrill of lying their way into hell. (Is there enough room to contain them all?) We shall cull a further slice or two of consolidated grime as foretaste of one such evident career in the brothel of falsehood.

It is never too late to retreat to first-base reflection and be re-classified as merely careless, not morally debased and villainous. So, we proceed to just one or two further warm-up issues in this preface. Once isolated, and within their recognisable contexts, they will serve as pointers, become internalised, and assist us in a true assessment of claims to repentance, social transformation, and social responsibility.

Two such issues are unveiled through the next excerpts. We urge special attention to the second, since it moves beyond mere individual peddling of falsehood to alert us to the nation survival active impediments. Those who peddle deliberate, self-serving distortions, invent and falsely attribute at will, are conscious agents of imposition – they foreclose nation survival as democratic choice. They exist in denial of dues to civil totality since, in effect, their mission is inherently a call to violent divisiveness. They are amoral egoists and, one can only hope that they meet their just deserts whenever Nemesis makes its routine rounds. Do I sound extreme, dear Aburo? If I do, kindly grant me the plea of precedence. I merely follow the impressionable doctrine of just deserts, one that derives — and my recollection is sound on this! – from religious practices during the season of self-mortification and penance, such as Lent.

Still resonating in recall is the ritual call-and-response service of open anathemisation — conducted by the officiating priest. One felt the sonorous voices that seemed divinely transmitted during that liturgical service, voices that seemed moulded in dread to imprison the souls of such fomenters of deadly divisions. I urge you to place such satanic provocateurs at the top of your waiting list whenever that ritual next comes around.

Please judge for yourself – here comes the second, the diabolic instigation of unprincipled minds:“In December he declared that Peter Obi was unfit to lead the country and recently insisted that Obi must not run in 2007.”

The lie, of course, is in the second part, set in bold. Kindly enquire of this author the time, place and context of this anti-democratic pronouncement. Although prepared to educate the needful on any available platform regarding why an electorate should vote or not vote for one candidate but not the other — the earlier part is opinion, and I have no interest whatsoever in debating, amending or clarifying.
A commonplace exercise of a fundamental human right, over which I dare any untutored scallywag or bandwagon intellectual to so much as think of denying or threatening this individual in plain exercise.

Public lies, like flies, beget maggots, so no one should be astonished when a sordid squelch is heard on a casual stroll, and the suppuration fluid spurts out to stain the vestments of the innocent.

Among the nation’s follow-follow undertakers, consider this promotional volunteer who forgot the fate of the heedless fly that followed the coffin into the grave: Soyinka was alleged to have said “Peter Obi should not be allowed to contest.”

“Alleged“ of course, the cowardly insurance certificate of fakers! Not be allowed? And who is supposed to stop him? To what level of imbecility are we being invited to stoop in order to proceed to a next step? And what is that next, uplifting and ennobling step? How gullible does society have to be in order NOT to be insulted by such a transparent, insolent fable? Is it possible that there actually exists a civic being of self-worth who fails to feel contaminated by such ethical degeneracy and political turpitude? Just what is at stake? To achieve what end? Some arcane strategy towards the next election? Or maybe, we should simply concern ourselves with the question: is the infectious disease still controllable?

My dear Reverend, I assure you that I would not dream of burdening you with an impossible mission which, despite my skeptical attitude to, indeed outright rejection of, the notion of spiritual attacks – strikes me as a valid case for some exorcist rites – no less than of the Devil himself still rampaging his way home from a full-fledged Satanic possession of hundreds, maybe even thousands of “netters”, now entrapped in what strikes me as a St. Vitus Dance, Nigerian edition.

Fortunately, you can invite additional help from Father Mathew Kukah who, in his introduction to that patchily entertaining photo-album“ cautions:“The author (not his real name!)” makes some claims that are at variance with the truth.”A priestly euphemism, but over-abundantly qualified for a comprehensively skeptical approach to whatever emerges from a warmed-up leftover Born-again, burning, he claims, with the fire of moral cleansing.

Is it not sufficient humiliation already to have to concede the existence of all such as meriting any exchange beyond the time of day?Enough! We shall stop here, lest we find ourselves already in the detailed Birthday package, dedicated to this year’s Independence Day. It would have been a great spice to the celebrations Menu if I had been able to serve it up on the symbolic date itself.

However, as you yourself acknowledged, I tend to overreach myself with commitments, to the detriment of the mechanics of sense and age. You will receive an advance copy, but our assiduous time-keepers will just have to await their turn. Beneath it all, as I hinted in our private commencement of exchanges, my mild anxiety – I admit — remains the risk of arriving at a point when, thanks to a deepening contempt for an aberrant minority of loquacious but sterile “mouthers”, what amounts to a Sanity Sabbatical – which is often indistinguishable from Silence – becomes a sustained, survival imperative for the very creative temperament.

I experiment, adjudge findings, and exercise my fundamental right of choice. Just an example — and with true embarrassment, and apologies for my participant claim — you cannot consider a Silence as truly “silent” where it has nonetheless returned VOICE – yes, Capital letters – to, and brought JUSTICE closer for, a large swathe of civil society – ‘the masses’, as so fulsomely mouthed by far too many.

I refer to the resuscitation of the ‘Ombudsman’ avenue of citizen redress – otherwise known as the Public Complaints Commission already in operation across all thirty-six states. I value such “silences” over and above – but not as replacement of! – the most robust and stimulating polemics – that is, serious minded, not simply coarse, uninformed and illiterate. In any case – and this is what counts — this happens to be attuned to my creative-productive Muse and energies at this stage, than singing the praises of a president, or revving up the old engine to condemn some real or contrived failures for thrill starved mouthers.

No matter, Reverend, I have implicitly embraced your entreaty, so – Peace? It is only a short while to the outing of the full LIARS edition – plus, depending on a number of factors – the routine pre-planned Open House encounter at its emergence, but I recall the wise saying that the devil always finds work for idle hands. So how on earth do two hundred million plus people occupy their time in the interim? We all know that even the rain itself stops falling when WS has not been heard lately, or is “alleged” to have been offering some discordant noises to counter vox populi’s own cacophony.

The difference is that I am bored stiff with my own voice – irrespective of whoever is running the show, not forgetting Einstein’s voice ringing in one’s head in mockery: only a madman does the same thing the same way with the same material over and over again and expects to obtain a different result! Well, at least one can attempt to frustrate the devil and his labour agency by finding work for the unemployed, thus, I resort yet again to your unexpected call to forbearance.

The solution is the somewhat unusual Birthday gift. It consists of the “Statement for the Defence” by a colleague, one also of the cloth, who acted in good conscience, and in defiance of fascistic laws now ravaging Democratic norms and institutions in the United States.

When Donald Trump’s ICE trucks invaded his neighbourhood on their mission of brutalisation, kidnappings, and deportations, our colleague emerged, proceeded to lay himself in front of the wheels of a truck and refused to budge. Another time he carried a placard and blocked the passage of the invading vehicles. He is currently undergoing his second round of court hearing.

No one is preaching an identical form of articulation but, I recollect enough of my bible thumping which seems specially addressed to this locality of lying mouthers: “Go and do thou likewise.”So now, my dear priest, I have spoken – or at least struck some notes as overture — and also, I hope, in good conscience. We should be able to announce an early date for the delivery of the full Birthday Package, working title still tentatively The Liars’ Progress – after John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress – confidently no later than the Great Day itself. Nothing taxing on the average mind, no attempt to patent any new discovery on that egalitarian asset – Silence – remedial and creative.

Our intent is simply to remind us of its historic legitimacy as both spear and shield, provocateur and recourse. The full tract finally recognises and acknowledges the existence of individual fabricators on their own terms, now that the worms are finally coming out of the woodwork, labels attached, notoriety embossed in confident impunity.

We dismiss too readily the defiant variants of the Nasir el-Rufais of our times, our feisty home-bred David in the den of Goliaths who, beset on all sides, lashed out with the memorable pronouncement: “Silence is the best answer for fools.” Pity. He should have expanded it to read….and LIARS! Happy Independence Day.

Wole Soyinka

Autonomous Republic of Ijegba (A.R.I).

September 29, 2026