…It was a great fun for me to watch Daniel lie his head off
“I want to draw blood (with it). I’m warning all of you, if you feel vengeful, read this book and you will be alright. It is like homeopathic medicine.” Prof. Soyinka said.
The renowned playwright spoke at the formal inauguration of The Wole Soyinka Foundation, a retreat haven for writers.
Speaking about the book, Soyinka said: “(InterInventions), it is the nastiest book I have ever written. It is so truthful that it hurts… it is my vengeance against public lies. It is not one of the butterfly books. No, it is not a butterfly book.
The 130 page work – InterInventions – Between Defective Memory and Public Lie, A Personal Odyssey in The Republic of Liars – was presented to the public at the June 12 Cultural Centre Kuto, Abeokuta by the Edo State governor, Comrade Adams Oshiohmole.
On page seven of the book, he decried public lies – “lies of staggering impudence, especially considering the fact that, in most cases, both victims and their traducers are still living”.
According to him, there is the need for a “ritual of public purgation where both sides – such victims of lies and the traducers, are brought together before the public tribunal for the world to know the truth”.
Soyinka also gave insight into lies, allegedly against him by some individuals and past leaders, including former Governor of Ogun State, Otunba Gbenga Daniel, stating in first paragraph of page 82 that “it was a great fun (for him, Soyinka) to watch him (Daniel) lie his head off”.
According to The Nation, Kongi, as he is fondly called by friends and admirers revealed that he would have gone insane had he not looked for a serene place to hide himself while putting his creative work together.
Soyinka while speaking at the inauguration of the Soyinka Foundation, said he owed it a responsibility to fundamentally respond to the lies that the former president, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, allegedly told against him in his latest biography, titled, “My Watch”, describing his book “Interventions” as Three-Carat Watch.
“So, let it be with Okikiola (Obasanjo’s middle name), the overgrown child of circumstance“.
He said: “I brainstormed with him over meals both when he was military Head of State in Dodan Barracks and in his home, Ota for some time after he left office and early in Aso Rock at his ‘second coming.’ Today, it is a different situation. If he offered to host me, I would wait until he had first swallowed a morsel from the same dish.
I had fully attuned myself to the fact that our Owu retiree soldier and prolific author is an infliction that those of us who share the same era and nation space must learn to endure. However, it does appear to me that there is no end to this individual’s capacity for infantile mischief, and for needless, mind-boggling provocations, such as his recent ‘literary’ intrusion on my peace.”
Soyinka added that efforts of intervention by some stakeholders made was a ‘cordial’ conversation he had with Obasanjo recently.
According to the Nobel laureate, during the conversation, he praised Obasanjo for the creative way he had developed the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library, which he described as a Presidential Laundromat and a product of executive extortion.
Soyinka, who chronicled the different places his path crossed with that of Obasanjo since childhood, insisted that the lies in which Obasanjo allegedly thrived were so unthinkable that he and some other people had started working on another book solely on the former president.
In the book, Soyinka also talked about the controversy surrounding the ownership and leadership of the board of the Centre for Culture and International Understanding, over which he and Oyinlola recently exchanged words.
Meanwhile, Governor Rauf Aregbesola of Osun state has asked Nigerians to plead with Soyinka not to resign as the chairman of the Centre for Black Culture and International Understanding (CBCIU). The Nobel Laureate bemoaned the elevation of public lies to a level that it has become an industry of sort, multiplying itself and worsened by the social media facilitating the predisposition for lies.
Culled from: http://www.goodbooksafrica.com