The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis

by Wole Soyinka

On November 10, 1995, the Nigerian military government under General Sani Abacha executed dissident writer Ken Saro-Wiwa along with eight other activists, and the international community reacted with outrage. From the Geneva based International Commission of Jurists (who called the executions a criminal act of state murder) to governments around the world (including the United States) who recalled their ambassadors, to the Commonwealth of Former British Colonies, who suspended Nigeria from the group, the response was quick, decisive, and nearly Nigeria is an outcast in the global village. The events that led up to Saro-Wiwa's execution mark Nigeria's decline from a post-colonial success story to its current military dictatorship, and few writers have been more outspoken in decrying and lamenting this decline than Nobel Prize laureate and Nigerian exile Wole Soyinka.
In The Open Sore of a Continent, Soyinka, whose own Nigerian passport was confiscated by General Abacha in 1994, explores the history and future of Nigeria in a compelling jeremiad that is as intense as it is provocative, learned, and wide-ranging. He deftly explains the shifting dramatis personae of Nigerian history and politics to westerners unfamiliar with the players and the process, tracing the growth of Nigeria as a player in the world economy, through the corrupt regime of Babangida, the civil war occasioned by the secession of Biafra under the leadership of Chief Odumegwu Ojukwu, the lameduck reign of Ernest Sonekan, and the coup led by General Sani Abacha, arguing that "a glance at the mildewed tapestry of the stubbornly unfinished nation edifice is necessary" to explain where Nigeria can go next. And, in the process of elucidating the Nigerian crisis, Soyinka opens readers to the broader questions of nationhood, identity, and the general state of African culture and
politics at the end of the twentieth century. Here are a range of issues that investigate the interaction of peoples who have been shaped by the clash of nationalism, power, corruption, violence, and the enduring legacy of colonialism. In a world tormented by devastation from Bosnia to Rwanda, how do we define a is it simply a condition of the collective mind, a passive, unquestioned habit of cohabitation? Or is what we think of as a nation a rigorous conclusion that derives from history? Is it geography, or is it a bond that transcends accidents of mountain, river, and valley? How do these varying definitions of nationhood impact the people who live under them? Soyinka concludes with a resounding call for international attention to this the global community must address the issue of nationhood to prevent further religious mandates and calls for ethnic purity of the sort that have turned Algeria, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Sri Lanka into killing fields.
Soyinka brings a lifetime of study and experience to bear on his writing, combining the skills of a poet and playwright with the astute political observations of a seasoned activist. An important and timely volume, The Open Sore of a Continent will be required reading for anyone who cares about Africa, human rights, and the future of the global village.

Genres: Africa, History, Nonfiction, Politics, Nigeria, Nobel Prize

176 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka, known as Wole Soyinka, is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "wide cultural perspective and... poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence", the first sub-Saharan African to be honoured in that category.
Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. In 1954, he attended Government College in Ibadan, and subsequently University College Ibadan and the University of Leeds in England. After studying in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its campaign for independence from British colonial rule. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967, during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years, for volunteering to be a non-government mediating actor.
Soyinka has been a strong critic of successive Nigerian (and African at large) governments, especially the country's many military dictators, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been concerned with "the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it". During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria on a motorcycle via the "NADECO Route". Abacha later proclaimed a death sentence against him "in absentia". With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation.
In Nigeria, Soyinka was a Professor of Comparative literature (1975 to 1999) at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ifẹ̀. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. While in the United States, he first taught at Cornell University as Goldwin Smith professor for African Studies and Theatre Arts from 1988 to 1991 and then at Emory University, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and has served as scholar-in-residence at New York University's Institute of African American Affairs and at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. He has also taught at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Yale, and was also a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Duke University in 2008.
In December 2017, Soyinka was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize in the "Special Prize" category, awarded to someone who has "contributed to the realization of cultural events that promote understanding and the exchange of knowledge between peoples".

Reviews

[Daniel Polansky]

Some ten years ago, at the first (and as it turned out, only) Brasilia Biennal, I was somehow at a party with the writer/human rights advocate Wole Soyinka, growing long in the tooth but still a statue of a man, with a white mane and dark eyes and a weighty if friendly bearing. My handler, a lovely Brazilian woman whose job was to make sure none of the English-speaking authors wandered away and got bludgeoned to death, made an unexpected point of introducing us. “This is Wole Soyinka,” she said, “Some ten years ago, at the first (and as it turned out, only) Brasilia Biennal, I was somehow at a party with the writer/human rights advocate Wole Soyinka, growing long in the tooth but still a statue of a man, with a white mane and dark eyes and a weighty if friendly bearing. My handler, a lovely Brazilian woman whose job was to make sure none of the English-speaking authors wandered away and got bludgeoned to death, made an unexpected point of introducing us. “This is Wole Soyinka,” she said, “Nobel prize winner. And this,” she said, turning to me, “is Daniel Polansky. His book is being compared to Game of Thrones and Raymond Chandler.” It was clear that Wole Soyinka had no idea what this meant, but he fumbled forward kindly, and I did my best to follow.

Anyway, I'm not sure why it took me so long to get to Mr. Soyinka's work, or in retrospect why I chose this one, which ends up being, basically, a series of essays about the political situation in Nigeria during the early 90's. It assumes an intimate knowledge about the nation's history and then circumstance which I can't claim to possess, and so I don't really have anything useful to say by way of a critique. I'll try and pick up something of his that is of broader interest, if for no other reason than his having shared one of the more awkward moments of my life. Nobel prize winner. And this,” she said, turning to me, “is Daniel Polansky. His book is being compared to Game of Thrones and Raymond Chandler.” It was clear that Wole Soyinka had no idea what this meant, but he fumbled forward kindly, and I did my best to follow.

Anyway, I'm not sure why it took me so long to get to Mr. Soyinka's work, or in retrospect why I chose this one, which ends up being, basically, a series of essays about the political situation in Nigeria during the early 90's. It assumes an intimate knowledge about the nation's history and then circumstance which I can't claim to possess, and so I don't really have anything useful to say by way of a critique. I'll try and pick up something of his that is of broader interest, if for no other reason than his having shared one of the more awkward moments of my life.

[Alfajirikali · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are few books that I have that have been signed by the author, and I am pleased to say that this is one of them. I heard Soyinka speak at IU, he read a couple poems, and during was moved to tears(during his poem about Ken Saro-Wiwa)--as were the majority of the audience, including myself.

His work is sublime in ways I cannot even think to describe. The prose is dense and includes vocabulary far beyond my own (I have learned to keep a dictionary handy when reading Soyinka); it is well worth the readers effort as his work is truly evocative.

[Lawal Salami · Rating 4 out of 5]

I keep learning more and more about my country.

[Nikhil · Rating 2 out of 5]

A collection of essays by Wole Soyinka concerning Nigerian politics and society during the times before and after the annulment of the 1993 elections. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of interesting material here. His fundamental theses seem to be that nation-states should be about the people who reside within their (arbitrary) geographic borders, and that nation-states are ideas, rather than objects. Neither of these thoughts are particularly novel (nor were they in 1995). As he belabors this point over 150 pages of excessively verbose prose, he also engages in tired cliches of gendering the nation-state (i.e., nation-state as woman, citizens as men, threats to the nation as rape, formation of nation as birth, etc.) that are known to both strip women of their historical agency as progenitors of a nation and to discursively trivialize women's experiences for political ends.

I admit to being disappointed with this text, particularly given how much I enjoyed Soyinka's play Death and the King's Horseman. I find Achebe to be a better essayist regarding Nigeria.

[Milcah Xkenjik · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book has to be read with a dictionary at all times - a poet knows far too many words.
I struggled to get through the book mainly because the jargon was a whole other level. I also had to look up a lot of the events, just for context.
But once you overcame the constant use of huge words, the content was pretty enlightening. I got to learn about Nigeria from the perspective of one exiled from the country which added a personal and emotive angle that I appreciated.

Overall, I would gladly re-read this book later on.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unless you are studying Nigerian history or intrigued by ideas of nationhood this book probably isn’t for you. I found it highly relevant in our currently fractured society and valuable in how we view ourselves and our future as a nation.

[James F · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a somewhat disappointing book. It's essentially a polemic (originally in lectures given in the United States) for the elimination of the Abacha dictatorship and the recognition of the elected president, Bashorun Moshood Abiola; and as such, it is fairly effective, although somewhat too given over to rhetoric and invective for my taste in political writings. Soyinka outlines much of the history of Nigeria since the fall of the Gowon regime in the early 70's, that is the so-called Second Republic of Shehu Shagari (which he describes as extremely undemocratic and corrupt, and as having been a major disaster for the country) and the series of military dictatorships which followed. Although I am unacquainted with Nigerian history and politics, apart from having read a few political novels, this aspect of the book rings true.

Soyinka considers the election of June 12, 1993, in which Abiola was elected but not allowed to take office, as the "lost opportunity" to create a real nation in Nigeria. While this is understandable in terms of the polemical purpose, and while I would certainly agree that the dictatorship was evil and the election should have been accepted, I was disappointed that there was no deeper analysis; I simply can't believe that formal electoral democracy, however superior to dictatorship, is by itself a solution to the problems of an economically underdeveloped state such as Nigeria; and his own description of Abiola's previous history (he was a leader of Shagari's party, who felt that he had been betrayed because he wasn't given the Presidency after Shagari's first term as promised) doesn't suggest to me that his election would have been much of a solution. The main point Soyinka makes is that Abiola was not part of the "Northern hegemony" and that he had support in all parts of the country and not just in the Yoruba area (he was -- like Soyinka himself -- a member of the Yoruba ethnic group, which is the largest in the country and has been excluded from power by the Northerners, following the model set by the British). This is another problem with the book; Soyinka discusses at length -- but in vague terms -- the problem of whether Nigeria is a "real nation" and seems to say that it isn't -- yet he also says that he prefers a united Nigeria. (The question of the election is of course academic now, since Abiola died under the Abacha dictatorship.)

In short, the book is very good on facts about the ruinous politics of the military and the "Northern hegemony", and about particular atrocities such as the genocide against the Ogoni ethnic group and the murder of Ken Saro-Wiwa, but falls short in the political analysis; based on some of his other writings I had expected more. Perhaps this was simply because of the practical purpose of the lectures; I am next reading his autobiographical work You Must Leave at Dawn which covers much of the same period, so perhaps that will go more into the underlying dynamics rather than concentrating so much on the one aspect of formal elections. On the other hand, maybe there really is no good solution in the present context of world politics.

[MissFunmie · Rating 4 out of 5]

BRILLIANT!
Professor Wole Soyinka's narrative on Nigeria, the state of her nationhood, and the state of the country's moral, political, and environmental existence is delivered with such delightful eloquence and wit. The Open Sore of a Continent is a must read for all Nigerians and of course anyone interested in the country's history, political and socioeconomic status, her despotic rulerships, and indeed more.

[Jude]

what i learnt from this book is that no matter what when it comes to the issue of marriage the olden tradition of bride price still prevail against the western tradition.and no matter what one's culture is not to be neglected.

[Ted]

I didn't complete this book, as I feel I should read more about Nigeria first in order to get the most out of it.

[Polly Callahan · Rating 5 out of 5]

you might need a dictionary
author is a major literary figure and his vocabulary is superb
he is Nigerian (not an outside journalist)

[melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this a long time ago in undergrad, but I remember liking it if that means anything.