Lagos — Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), generally recognized as one of the founders of analytical philosophy, the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century, is perhaps Britain's best known and most controversial/ philosophical commentator of modern times.

John Maynard Keynes, an economist, his contemporary at Oxford, that he was the cleverest person he ever knew. We can boldly and proudly say same for Professor Wole Akinwande Soyinka, poet, playwright, actor and political activist.

He is truly clever in the purest, intellectual sense of the word.

Soyinka attended St. Peter's School, Ake, Abeokuta; Abeokuta Grammar School; Government College, Ibadan; University College (now University of Ibadan) Ibadan; and University of Leeds, England. The winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature was 76 years recently.

Soyinka is a wordsmith, a man with the gift of the articulate speech, as Bernard Shaw would rightly describe someone. Words tumble out of his mouth so effortlessly, and always the right words for every occasion.

He built a prodigious reputation at home and abroad as an original scholar. In other words, he is an orator of a kind; he speaks with erudition and compassion to younger generations in important contributions. His character, attributes and scholarly contributions earned him the respect and honour of whoever he comes in contact with all over the world. Soyinka has greatness thrust upon him and has achieved greatness. He is eruobodo (in Yoruba meaning brave).

He is a man who is very firm, resolute, determined and uncompromisingly rigid on matters of principle.

Soyinka is always gripped by the creative and destructive power of technology and the irony of man getting killed by those same devices he invented to enjoy life. Ogun, the Yoruba God of iron and symbol of technological creativity may be the Nobel Laureate's favourite in the pantheon of gods.

However, he is generally alarmed when the mercurial Ogun decides, as the Yoruba put it, "to drink blood". This concern Soyinka has shown in "The Road" (a play), some other poems, and even during his stint as chairman, Federal Road Safety Commission (FRSC).

Soyinka defies easy categorization. He is a man of many parts, what Stanley Macebuh said "his renaissance posture", compels us not to limit him to merely being a writer or an activist or even a 'politician'. Soyinka is many things to many people.

The Sierra-Leonean scholar of English studies, Eldred Jones, dubbed him our own W.S., a reference to the initials Soyinka shares with that other genius of English Literature, William Shakespeare. His many students in this country since Kongi's Harvest, for some mysterious reason, fondly dubbed him 'Kongi' after the not so likeable character of that name. That name has stuck ever since.

Playwright, polemicist, mythopoiest, scholar, connoisseur of rare wine and novelist, Soyinka was born on 13th July 1934 to a school headmaster father and an influential Egba mother.

The recollections of his early childhood in Abeokuta, recorded so scintillatingly in his award winning work, Ake: The years of childhood testify to a rich and varied childhood made more purposeful by the strong presence of an array of extended family relations and personages.

It is a truism to say that his writing career dates back to the early 1950s when he was a very young undergraduate at the then University College, Ibadan, he did not start serious writing until he went to the University of Leeds in England through contact with the renowned English scholar of Shakespeare, George Wilson Knight, sharpened his critical and literary sensibilities.

By 1956, the year he graduated from Leeds, he had written his first democratic sketches and, by 1958, he had completed work on what were to be his first two major plays, The Swamp Dwellers and The Lion and the Jewel. The rest of the story is now part of our literary history.

Consequently, Soyinka tried his hands on a variety of jobs; bouncer, supply teacher in a London school, freelance writer. was however his stint at the Royal Court Theatre in London, when the theatre was t the centre of English dramatic revival and the haven of young idealistic playwright that made a substantial difference in his career.

By the time he returned to Nigeria 1960, to found his own theatre company, he had acquired considerable skill and immense self-confidence as a dramatist.

Soyinka, the admirer of Ogun, has demonstrated that art and the artist can be put in the service of the society. In 1986, he became the first African to win a Nobel Prize for literature for, according to the Swedish Academy, "fashioning a drama of existence out of his rich cultural heritage". However, literature took a back seat during the urgent struggle for the soul of Nigeria.

Even then, while battling around the world, he still found the time to write essays and reviewed some books. This is an unusual fighter who hap ns to be a remarkable writer, a keen hunter of ideas and a national conscience. .

* Soeze is the Chief Officer (Administration) in the Human Resources Development Department (HRDD) of the Petroleum Training Institute (PTI), Effurun, Delta State, Nigeria.

By CHARLES IKEDIKWA SOEZE