When Okigbo Came To Purchase Arms For Biafra In Brussels Where We Met, I Challenged Him – Soyinka

The lifestyles and instances of Prof. Wole Soyinka, mainly in a bit that tries to chronicle his acts of bravery, may be incomplete without the acquainted tale of the way he broke into the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation studio in Ibadan for the duration of the Western Region’s political disaster in 1965.

Wole Soyinka’s involvement in the Nigeria-Biafra Civil War, for which he was sent to jail, is even a larger occasion in his life, without which his lifestyle records may be incomplete. Hear him:

“We have been extra or much less our own circle of relatives of artistes at Independence. There becomes an innovative own circle of relatives, and that own circle of relatives becomes scattered. I was in Stockholm in 1967 for the Scandinan-African Writers Conference. And one of the saddest moments for me is that such a lot of faces have been lacking from Nigeria—predicted but now no longer there: Christopher Okigbo, Chinua Achebe, Gabriel Okara—the Biafrans have been lacking even in secure Stockholm. The drums of battle are no longer muted.

It has become the ultimate hazard for us to fulfill and communicate approximately what has now become inevitable, but it should still, perhaps, be avoided on the ultimate second. I returned to Nigeria very unhappy, and I began to feel as though I had misplaced a limb—numerous limbs, in fact. It became like, Is this going to be it? We might end up as enemies confronting each other throughout the road of fire. There have been people who have been geared up to purchase arms, like Christopher Okigbo.

At the time, I had already run into Christopher Okigbo—it occurred in Brussels—and I even took into account the call of the hotel—Hotel Koenisburg—in simple terms with the aid of accident, and I knew he had come to purchase arms for Biafra. I challenged him, and he admitted it. All those fortuitous encounters inspired a sense of urgency in me. Later, I had an assembly in advance in London—I point out that during my IBADAN—in which we pointed out the opportunity of going to Biafra on an ultimate-minute challenge of intervention. Again, as I disclosed in my memoirs, Aminu Abdullahi, who’s now dead, definitely volunteered to pass; this became known at the assembly in London. Vanguard’s report.

Source; The Vanguard paper

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