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African Voices Playmakers, CNN International’s magazine programme, will this week host world renowned playwright, dramatist, poet and rights activist, Professor Wole Soyinka. The 30-minute programme is sponsored by digital solutions provider, Globacom.
The Nobel Laureate will be sharing details of the values, the ideologies and the passion that formed the foundation of his enviable life and career.
This week’s edition commemorates Professor Oluwole Akinwande Soyinka’s 90th birthday, having been born on July 13, 1934 in Abeokuta, Ogun State.
He will also regale viewers with the details of his extraordinary activism which birthed his literary works. A movie which highlights his political incarceration in Nigeria is billed for release this year.
Having gained international repute through his books in prose, poetry and drama, Soyinka became the first African writer to win the Nobel Laureate in Literature in 1986 for his “wide cultural perspective and… poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence”.
As a student of the University College, Ibadan, now known as the University of Ibadan, his artistic talents had been noticeable. He later gained admission to the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom for a Master’s degree in Comparative Literature.
Added to his Nobel Prize, Soyinka also got the Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature in 1990; Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award in 2009; Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, Lifetime Achievement, 2012, and the Europe Theatre Prize, Special Prize, 2017.
In his honour at 90, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu renamed the National Arts Theatre, Iganmu, Lagos, him.
The programme will be broadcast at 8.30 a.m. on Saturday on DSTV Channel 401. Repeats will be broadcast the same Saturday at noon; Sunday at 4.30 a.m. and 7.00 p.m.; and on Monday at 4.00 a.m. Repeats will be on Saturday next week at 8.30 a.m. and 12 noon and on Sunday at 4.30 a.m. and 7.00 p.m.
