By Prisca Sam-Duru

As part of activities lined up to celebrate Nobel Laureate Professor Wole Soyinka who turns 90 next month, a documentary titled ‘Ebrohimie Road: A Museum of Memory’ is set to be premiered.

The documentary, based on the little building on the University of Ibadan campus, where the poet, playwright, memoirist, essayist and polemicist, Soyinka lived while he was a teacher at the premier tertiary institution, is billed to debut in July.

It was the same bungalow located a few meters from the bustling main gate of the university campus, where Soyinka was arrested in 1967 on “espionage” charges for daring to cross to the Biafra Republic to dissuade then Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu, leader of the secessionist group from going to war with the government of Nigeria. This would lead to his incarceration for 29 months by the Nigerian government led by Lt. General Yakubu Gowon.

Soyinka was however released in October 1969, a few weeks before the war ended in 1970. Even though he returned to the house, he did not return to his job at the Department of Theatre Arts, rather, he proceeded on exile in 1971.

Slated as part of activities commemorating the 90th birthday (July 13) Soyinka’s anniversary, the 110-minute documentary written and directed by writer, culture researcher Kola Tubosun, with ace cinematographer Tunde Kelani, behind the camera, will first be screened on July 11, 2024 at the University of Lagos. It will feature as the third item in a full-day scholarly event jointly organised by the Wole Soyinka International Cultural Exchange, WSICE, and the Nigeria Academy of Letter, NAL. The theme of the event is ENI-OGUN: An Enduring Legacy, and it will, aside the screening, feature a symposium, a dance performance and a reception.

Produced by Olongo Africa, the documentary which featured revealing interviews with immediate families, relatives, associates as well as comrades of Soyinka, will also be screened on July 20 at the WS90 celebration in London, jointly organised by the WSICE and The Africa Centre. It will thereafter move around other cultural and historical centres in Nigeria, parts of Europe, North and South America, as well as festivals across continents.

Screenings continue at other events and festivals up till November 2024.

The story follows a small campus bungalow in the University of Ìbàdàn which played an outsized role in the life of one man, one family, one university, and the nation. It was in this house on Ebrohimie Road, University of Ibadan where, sometime in 1967, writer Wọlé Ṣóyínká was arrested after having returned home from a visit to Biafra for a personal intervention in the Nigerian Civil War that was just breaking out.

These events have already been recounted in The Man Died (1971), You Must Set Forth at Dawn (2006), and other works. It was there, too, that he returned to, from jail when he was released 29 months later, after which he went into exile in 1971. He never returned to Ìbàdàn, choosing to take up a role at the University of Ifẹ̀ in 1976, where he retired in 1985, a year before winning the Nobel Prize in Literature.

This house played host to many friends, family, and associates over the years while he was in solitary confinement, and features in his years of employment with the Ibadan University. And it was in that house where, in October 1969, after his release, he granted a famous interview to a journalist from Daily Times to express himself about the war and the events that got him locked up. The portrait from that encounter made it to the cover of Ìbàdàn: The Penkelemes Years (1994).

Ebrohimie Road: A Museum of Memory, examines how the personal became the national, through the recollection of central and peripheral characters as well as how a small campus residence became witness to some of the most significant issues in Nigerian social, political, and literary history, many of which remain unresolved.