Without a shred of doubt, he is a Nigerian of note, intellect, and integrity. If you call him a starry cognoscente of literary moxie and intrepidity, you aren’t out of line. He is a professor of too many laudable things. I was a baby when stories of his exploits in nation-building filtered into my infantile ears. He is Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka. My reverence for this professor is utmost.
I heard that during the Nigerian Civil War, the Nobel Laureate didn’t hesitate to take sides. Soyinka was almost a lone voice in the wilderness appealing for a ceasefire in the brutal battle where over 2 million people died. An allegation that he conspired with the Biafran rebels was levelled against him by the Nigerian government. And for taking sides, he was slammed in the calaboose and held as a political prisoner for 22 months. In the struggles for nation-building, human rights and demand for justice and fairness, Soyinka has always been amid it all. He is a jolly good fellow in the hearts and minds of millions of Nigerians home and abroad. I am one of his torrid tub-thumpers.
A few days ago, I watched his press briefing video regarding a letter of his B1/B2 visa revocation from the US Consulate in Lagos. The professor has been told to bid bye-bye to America. His intellectual property on high demand at Harvard, Emory, Yale, Duke and Marymount Loyola in the US, where he once taught, will have to go somewhere else. Soyinka must have been expecting this boisterous blowback. In 2016, he publicly announced that he had cut into tiny pieces his Resident Alien Card (Green Card) granted him while he worked in the US. He said he was fulfilling his pledge to throw away his US residency privilege and leave the country if Donald Trump won the presidential election. Shortly before the vote, he had vowed to give up his permanent US residency over a Trump victory to protest the Republican billionaire’s campaign promises to get tough on immigration. Trump won, and this is how Soyinka responded when questioned: “I have already done it, I have disengaged (from the United States). I have done what I said I would do… I had a horror of what is to come with Trump… I threw away the (green) card, and I have relocated, and I’m back to where I have always been,” meaning his homeland, Nigeria.
Soyinka was tired of living and doing business in America because of the man who won an election and now sits in the White House. That he politically disagreed with the whizzing wind blowing across America in this season is understandable. He is one among millions. A few American citizens, like Talk-Show hostess Ellen DeGeneres and Comedian Rosie O’Donnell, have both voluntarily fled America and jetted out somewhere else because Donald Trump is president. Many more have threatened to do the same. But none of these personalities cut up their passports. I was astonished that Prof has no idea that America does not fool around with its symbolism-the flag, the passport, the green card, even an effigy of the president. Maybe he does. Americans will plunge into a ‘cold war’ over any of these. When Soyinka shredded his green card, he saw the ‘cold war’ coming. His 2016 action was not seen by Americans as a symbol of protest. It was a public declaration of contempt, insult, and assault. A Green Card is a symbol of trust and privilege, a covenant of respect between the holder and the grantor nation. When Soyinka publicly shredded and cut the green card, it was seen as a rejection and defilement of the trust that existed between the two parties in the agreement of sorts.
Soyinka is a high achiever. A good and great man who will, for a long time, be remembered for his works and impacts around the world. But that 2016 move was an insult to a country that was hospitable to him in his challenging times with the military. In 1994, he escaped on the back of an Okada to the neighbouring Republic of Benin, and America was his destination. And Americans welcomed him with open arms. Soyinka is an ‘Omoluabi’, and it’s not for nothing. Omoluabis are known to be grateful to their helpers in times of trouble. America was good to Prof., and he is allowed by law to abandon his green card. What is required is simply filling out Form I-407 without paying a dime. Prof. shouldn’t have desecrated the document publicly the way he did. He should feel forever indebted to America, despite the man in power who will not be around forever. I respect and love Prof, but this move was dingy.
I live and do business in America, and I got my Green Card 27 years ago. It was an emotional war and a gruesome process. It drained me psychologically and financially. Ask anyone who has had to go through the process; you will always remember the scars of that battle. It was a battle, and always one if you are not a Wole Soyinka. Prof probably got his on a platter of gold because of his status and literary and intellectual ambient. I’m not sure if he fought the war that many of us had to fight to secure this privilege. He shouldn’t have torn up that card the way he did. He could have just surrendered it according to the dictates of the law without making a mess of the great and good gesture America accorded him.
Despite scattershot shenanigans you see in politics and governments, despite the sitting of one man at the White House who came and will one day leave, would I have done the same? Definitely not. I do what I do around the world today because America gave me the opportunity. For that, I am eternally grateful.
To Americans, desecrating American symbolism is like sending a cruise missile into mainland America. With its might, the country will respond quickly and justifiably in defence of its homeland. Will Prof’s Green Card be reinstated even if Democrats return to power? At 91 years of age, what will Soyinka need a Green Card for? I’m certain he’ll keep travelling the world, or still just stay quietly at his country home in Abeokuta and wait for the fingers of God to point him in the next direction away from this cruel and troubling world.
#SMACKDOWN