The Shadow Between Soyinka and Oyeyemi

“Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Shadow…

Between the conception

And the creation

Between the emotion

And the response

Falls the Shadow…”

- T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

In February 1993, while on my biweekly visit to the office of the Energy Correspondents’ association, deep inside the NNPC building in Falamo, Lagos, news filtered in that Beko Ransom-Kuti was in the building. There was excitement amongst the reporters present.

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This was a period when NNPC was going about buying up newspaper editors to get media support in the fight to remove oil subsidy. Some Energy correspondents have had their stories killed in various editorial desks because they were not favorable to the drive to remove oil subsidy.

A debate quickly ensued in the association’s office as to whether Beko was there on a fact finding mission or whether the NNPC people had brought him to their corporate headquarters to buy him over. A dozen or so reporters present joined the debate.

Though I covered energy for the Daily Mail, I also covered Arts and sat on the editorial board. As such, I was not a regular visitor to the association’s NNPC office and could only come to the NNPC once every other week. Because of that irregularity, I was not conversant with the culture of the members of the association.

By the end of the day, an official of our association came to inform the reporters present that NNPC would like us to keep mute about the visit of Beko.

As I made my way back to the Daily Mail office in Lagos, I decided to file the story. I thought it was news worthy. The next day, it became our newspaper’s lead story. The Daily Mail was also the only paper in the country that carried the story.

Those with an understanding of the inner workings of the media know that the nature of the stories reporters file depends on three factors. The first factor is the position of the newspaper the reporter writes for. The second factor is the degree of danger associated with the story. And the third is the sentiment of the reporter.

The reporter’s sentiment is a factor of who is in the reporters’ good book; how much inducement had occurred surrounding the news story and what quid pro quo is up in the air.

The relationship between Soyinka and the media is simple. Soyinka is in the good books of the press for his years of activism on behalf of the people of Nigeria. Putting Soyinka on the front page turns a newspaper into a hot sell. Reporters need his support when they are whooped by security agencies. And the one factor unknown to distant observers is that most reporters are closet writers. And no aspiring writer wants to be in the black book of the only Nobel Laureate we have.

So you can understand why Nigerian reporters would file stories about the ‘incident in Benin’ in Wole Soyinka’s favor. It is easy to see why they played down the aspect of Babangida’s contact with Soyinka.

Now, that aspect of the story not reported in the media flows through the grapevine. While the media may have thought that they were helping their hero, the reality is that they were dumping him in the grapevine where facts are muddled up with fiction. The fact that the media does not write a story does not mean that it did not happen. Neither does it mean that the story will not circulate.

Here is where Remi Oyeyemi came in. Upon hearing from sources close to Wole Soyinka that the Kongi came in contact with Babangida, something the media ignored, he came out seeking clarification.

Those who know Soyinka very well know that he is sensitive to anything connecting him to Babangida. If there is any blemish in his activist career, his relationship with Babangida must be one. So it is clear that as long as the media report appeared ‘favorable’ he will not care about the accuracy. If it is unfavorable, like Oyeyemi’s piece turned out to be, no matter how busy Soyinka might be, the news will get to him either directly or from one of the numerous associates he has across the globe.

For someone in the limelight all these years, handling such a situation should be second nature to him. Obviously, Soyinka chose a combative approach. It works if he is fighting the likes of Ali Mazrui. But it fell flat in Oyeyemi’s case. First of all, if Soyinka had placed a call to his media paddy, Laolu Akande, he would have told Soyinka who Oyeyemi is. In which case, Soyinka’s perception of Oyeyemi as a ‘faceless’ internet warrior would not have been conceived. Also, Soyinka would have been told that Oyeyemi is more of his philosophical soul mate than say, Okey Ndibe.

What happened here is that Soyinka over-reacted. The apparent democratization of the media took him by surprise. He was caught fighting a 21st century war with Cold War weapons.

The aspect of Soyinka’s reaction that actually irked me was Soyinka’s attempt at blaming Saharareporters for publishing Oyeyemi’s piece. By suggesting that Saharareporters should have called him to verify the content of Oyeyemi’s opinion piece, Soyinka was asking for a special treatment. I doubt if Saharareporters can afford to verify with subjects all insinuations and conclusions of writers before it publishes each piece.

There is nothing in Oyeyemi’s piece that warranted its rejection. In these days, when blog is king, anyone determined to get anything on the web and in every mailbox of his targeted audience can. And this idea of blaming Saharareporters for opinion articles written by commentators is beyond me. When Saharareporters files a report, it is written by Saharareporters. The rest are written by authors whose bylines are published. The opinion of the authors does not reflect the opinion of Saharareporters.

As for the viewing public, the Soyinka-Oyeyemi incident exposed our weaknesses. We have a weakness for heroes. We don’t have many of them, so we guard the little we have to the point where we end up doing them more harm than good. Also, we have a weakness for low expectation. We expect so little, even from the very people we hold so high. And yet, we wonder why mediocrity rules our land. The other weakness we have is in missing what T. S. Eliot called ‘the shadow between the idea and the reality.” Without a good understanding of this shadow, we cannot truly understand contexts and patterns. And without contexts and patterns there is no understanding of the big picture.

The last time I checked, the Queen Mother is dead. Mother Teresa is dead. As for the Pope, he is being kicked around everyday by both ‘fanciful’ and faceless people.

That is the new world order. Its mantra is simple – in comments we trust. And to Wole Soyinka, Remi Oyeyemi and the rest of us, I say, welcome.