Sunny Igboanugo Releases New Book on Soyinka
Charles Ajunwa
Veteran journalist, Sunny Igboanugo has announced the release of a book, detailing his encounter with Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka, over issues relating to the outcome of the 2023 presidential election.
The book titled: Soyinka’s Metamorphosis, Echoes from the “People’s Mandate,” was a response to an earlier publication by the literary icon titled: ‘Baiting Igbophobia, The Sunny Igboanugo Thesis’, where he had tackled the journalist over an earlier article relating to the outcome of the 2023 presidential polls.
In a statement announcing the debut of the book, his riposte to Soyinka, Africa’s first Nobel Prize in Literature winner, Igboanugo, while acknowledging the challenges embedded in the profession, some of them life-threatening, explained that his effort was a protest to the course the nonagenarian took on the issue.
He particularly lamented that instead of treating the said article on its merit, Soyinka veered off into ethnic issues, which were never raised therein either directly or through inference, noting that this trend has not only been quite prevalent in the polity today, but posed great danger to Nigeria.
He bemoaned that the globally-acclaimed playwright, who had put his immense skill to good use and devoted the larger part of his rewarding life on earth to challenging oppression, advocating human freedom and speaking truth to power would now be associated with this ugly trend, adding it not only underscores a sudden metamorphosis, but traumatic if not heart-rending.
Igboanugo, who detailed some of the travails he encountered in the three decades of practice, including the years of his active advocacy for the struggle to revalidate the annulled June 12, 1993 presidential election, now confirmed to have been won by Moshood Kashimawo Olawale (MKO) Abiola, some of them in near brushes with death, vowed that he would neither be intimidated nor succumb to any attempt to deny him his Nigerianness.
“None of these has brought me to the devastating level of distress I experienced in the last few months, since this book by Prof. Soyinka came to my attention. It almost brought me to the state of emotional wreck. The said book, under his Intervention Series, was in response to my article of September 19, 2023.
“In the said opinion piece that triggered the mighty pen of the literary giant, I had tried, purely in line of duty, to establish the motive behind the Prof’s posturing about the 2023 presidential election, particularly with reference to Peter Obi and the Labour Party. In expounding my logic, I tried to stay the course, as a professional ought to, never delving into personal attacks or insinuating anything untoward against the revered sage.
“But what did I get in reply? In his riposte via the book, the Prof. only made a scant mention of the content of the article in question. Instead, he devoted the rest to attacking my Igbo identity. Surely, if the sage had descended on me as a person, if he had reduced me as less than Nebuchadnezzar, as he once labelled, former President Goodluck Jonathan, I would have remained mute and probably continued with my trade the way I know it.
“Reading the book itself, he did exactly that. He treated me to a lavish buffet of his legendary tongue-lashing. But he did not stop at describing my persona in the most terrible terms or attacking my professional competence.
For this alone there would not have been any form of contest in the form of a riposte.
“My pain was the attempt by the Prof. to strip me of my identity as a Nigerian and closet me in purely ethnic straightjacket. There was nothing in the original piece from me that suggested any ethnic link by any stroke of imagination. The only link I tried to establish was that the NADECO affinity the Nobel Laureate shares with President Bola Tinubu as veterans of the June 12 struggle. My take was that it was the binding factor.”
