Wole Soyinka is a is a Nigerian playwright, poet and essayist. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first African to be honoured in that category
He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its struggle for independence from Great Britain. 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
Soyinka was and still is strong critic of successive Nigerian governments, especially the country's many military dictators, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe and Gaddafi regimes. 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, Abacha later proclaimed a death sentence against him "in absentia." With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation.
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