That Setting Dawn

by Wole Soyinka

(read at the Memorial on 8th August 2023)

A DAWN THAT SET.

Our friend and colleague was not content to be one more assiduous miner in the field of

prose fiction and the dramatic arena. How widely, I wonder, is his historical verve known,

much less impressed on the minds of a young generation? I refer of course to his seminal

work - JUST BEFORE DAWN, one of the most absorbing, vivid historical expositions one is

grateful to have encountered. Despite its upfront claim to be just “faction” – a blend of fact

and fiction - the question that the work provokes is: was he present, an eye-witness or

eavesdropper, even rapporteur and participant at those events? JUST BEFORE DAWN exerts

on the reader a veracity of factual minutae, woven seamlessly to create the tapestry that

earns the name of history. One can only marvel that such a work has not been made a

mandatory text-book for Nigerian schools – at all levels.

Now, why not? Simple. To evade the hard lessons and challenges of that, and similar

conscientious literary labour of retrieval – no, it was not proscribed, that would be too

crude, too obvious - It was easier, less blatant to simply BANISH History from the nation’s

school curriculum - across the entire board. Kole Omotoso was not alone in the conferment

of that fate. However, given the “best-seller” quality of that work for student and casual

reader alike, I have never abandoned the feeling that his was the original agent provocateur

that laid the foundation of that nihilist obsession of Nigerian guilt-ridden rulers: to cauterize

the collective memory of their own people.

That work, among numerous others, lives on. The sun has set on a fecund mind that

sought to bring both light and vision to his portion of a shared earth – that is the fate of one

and all, sooner or later. However, to witness dawn itself, its rays no sooner thrust tentatively

forth, set daily on the nation he sought to irradiate through a rich harvest of imagination

and factual narrative – that is a fate worse than death. Perversely perhaps – our Kole

deserves to be envied. He did not linger long enough to share the ultimate verdict that yet

hovers over that nation – Darkness at Noon.

Wole SOYINKA