NIGERIAN NOBEL PRIZE-WINNER USES PEN AND VOICE TO CAMPAIGN FOR DEMOCRACY

Author: By Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Staff

Date: Sunday, November 21, 1993
Page: 81
Section: OP-ED PAGE

Seven years ago, Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka won the Nobel Prize for literature. That has not prevented him from being a target of harassment. In the summer, he was sitting in his office in his hometown of Abeokuta when people who were working on his house came to tell him that a police helicopter was hovering over it.

Soyinka and some friends watched to see where the helicopter would go. The copter went on to buzz the homes of two other democracy activists. "It was pure psychological terror," Soyinka said on a recent visit here. "Some people think the Nobel Prize makes you bulletproof. I never had that
illusion."

Soyinka, as he has done throughout his life, is using his pen and voice to campaign for democracy in Nigeria. He was in Washington to keep international
pressure on the Nigerian government to recognize the June 12 presidential elections in Africa's most populous nation.

Businessman Moshood Abiola was generally believed to have won the election, but the results were annulled by the former military leader, Gen. Ibrahim Babangida. Babangida then installed a highly unpopular puppet interim government run by Ernest Shonekan.

The Nigerian high court recently ruled that the interim government was illegal. Abiola proclaimed the decision "a significant victory for the people of Nigeria." But last week Shonekan resigned and was replaced by another military leader, Gen. Sani Abacha. Abacha immediately banned all political parties and political rallies.

Those announcements are a major blow to Soyinka, who is in the forefront of organizing protest rallies. In September the oil workers held a 10-day strike that dried up gasoline supplies. Last week labor unions protested astronomical gasoline prices by virtually shutting down the capital, Lagos.

Even before Abacha's proclamations, rallies were hardly welcome. Soyinka
recalling one democracy rally that was greeted by 200 armed police. "So we quietly moved on to another place," Soyinka said. "We started the rally. Then, after about 10 minutes, soldiers hanging off ropes started crawling over the windows like out of one of your movies with the Rangers or Delta Force.

"So I went outside and said, 'What is your problem?' One of the soldiers said, 'Mr. Soyinka, we respect you, sir. We mean no harm. We don't want any bloodshed. But you must move on.' This was one of those situations where I guess my notoriety helps. I kept up the charade of talking to the soldier for several minutes so the main speaker could finish the most important speech.

"Finally the soldier said, 'Brother Soyinka, we know what you're up to. Enough. The rally must stop.' "

Soyinka, 59, said working on behalf of democracy in Nigeria has "cost me a year of my working time" for writing, not to mention hobbies like hunting antelope and fowl. It was not the first time he has sacrificed writing for the future of his nation. In 1967 he was jailed for almost two years. The government accused Soyinka of working with separatists in Biafra in the hideous civil war that claimed 1 million Biafran lives. Soyinka said all he had done was publicly call for peace talks.

Two decades later, Soyinka believes that without recognition of the June elections, the nation of 90 million people could easily disintegrate again into violence.

He and others have urged quiet talks, perhaps out of the country between military forces and civilian groups. For this he has been rewarded with temporary government confiscations of his passport and long waits at customs when he does travel.

"It is so bleak at this moment," Soyinka said, "that there may be no avoidance of some kind of violence. The question may be how little or how much."

He said the Clinton administration has been reasonably supportive of democracy up to now but could have been more forceful at the beginning of the annulment by freezing Nigerian assets and halting US-Nigerian trade. Asked how the United States can now apply proper pressure, Soyinka, making note of the
shrinking interest of the United States in using its military to help Somalia, Haiti and Bosnia, said Clinton officials could be helpful behind the scenes by facilitating talks.

Soyinka once wrote in a poem, "I am . . . the blood rejuvenated from a dying world." He said he did not support the politics of "any one individual." He said his mission is to keep Nigeria from becoming the world's next hot spot of dying. Soyinka said, "We are supporting the process that the people have called for."

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