"If
Soyinka did anything for me, the most important thing he did was to [wean] me off
the Christian notion that the traditional society is evil – evil in the sense
that if you were not a Christian, whatever else you believe in is considered
not so moral or straightforward. Everything about tradition which many people
saw rather in distracted ways, Soyinka saw as a part of a very well worked out
way of seeing the world and the mystic truth in Soyinka’s analysis of society
enabled you to see that traditional society had a philosophical underpinning
that was helpful in knowing the ways the world worked. I have my own decision
on Soyinka’s position; his not allowing himself to be submerged by the grammar
of Christian denunciations and the general Islamic assault on so-called
paganism help me relate to my two families. My maternal grandfather was a
Christian, who once they abandoned the ‘fetish ways’ of the traditional
society, adopted Christianity without looking back. My father’s family, first
because my father was a motor mechanic, had to be an Ogun worshipper and if you
are an Ogun worshipper, you are required to observe tenets that derive powers
from mythology and also indicate ways of treating your fellow human beings in a
manner that helps a sense of collectivity in society. Myth making is therefore
at the centre of the way Soyinka views traditional society. I have managed
because I did not quite accept all the hoopla about Christianity; I learnt to
see the interconnection between what was Christianity and what was supposedly
traditional religion. All religions are the same – they are based on some form
of worship which is to say that you have faith in what those who came before
you had seen and done. … Soyinka was a strong critic of the religious ways of
doing things. … [He] actually did something out of the usual because he took
traditional religion on its face value. He took a philosophy out of it which
may discount certain material elements but stuck to its core and its core is
that the life we live can be understood by the knowledge that has been
condensed from the prehistory to the present and that if we understand them
well, we could live a good life in lot of ways."
Punchng.com, March 22, 2020
