Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka has said he could not conceive, for a moment, of mature people calling themselves ‘Obidients.’
Soyinka was answering a question posed to him on the issue of power and freedom. He said those calling themselves ‘Obidients’ had already indicated submissiveness to someone.
“Recently, my present problem with some politicians and their followers is that I cannot conceive, for a moment, of mature people calling themselves Obidients, because this already implicates submission. People don’t just give names for nothing in Africa,” he said.
Soyinka said he has problem with ideologies as they stifled someone’s freedom.
“And this has been my problem with ideologues. Agreed, one must not say I am distancing myself from ideology. One must study those ideologies. But don’t follow them intact. And if any ideology-and that embraces both the theocratic, and the secular – preach in any way the gospel of submission, it means that you are not free.
“If you accept it, it means you are not free. You’ve indentured yourself; you’ve indentured your mind; you’ve curtailed the potential fullness of your being. And when I encounter a tendency called revisionists being pilloried in certain progressive ideologies, revisionists being treated as the scum of the earth, that is already an indicative of absolutism, the craving of power over others, to dominate the thinking of others,” he stated.
Soyinka said the word submission meant obedience, saying religion preached submission but asked: “submission to whom? Each individual can find God himself or herself. Yes, you come to a community of believers, a market of spirituality, in which you sort of exchange spiritual intimations, disappointments, and failures.
“You believe that you can invoke collective energy and spiritual solace. You can invoke certain forces. All that is very good. Excellent. But when I hear the word submission in any religion, whatever religion, I consider it anti-human straightaway. Let everybody find his spiritual direction. Go for guidance. Yes. Exchange. Yes. Develop certain ethical principles, and agree on those ethical principles.
“To follow an ethical principle does not require submission to intermediaries. No. Find Godhead in your own heart, in your soul, if you believe in Godhead. Basically, to me, religions are just metaphors for existence, living, active metaphors for existence. Nothing wrong with them, but they become anti-human, enemies of humanity when the idea of submission comes in.”
He argued that when people submitted themselves, they are submitting themselves to another human being who could not prove in any form that he or she has a closer relationship, a closer and more acute, benevolent understanding of Godhead than they do.
“And we have the examples all around. Look at the corruption, the abuse in the Roman Catholic Church of young boys, the scandals, the corruption. Look at the violence in the Islamic religion, again enforcing followers, and capturing people in the name of a supreme deity. And then you come and talk of submission?
“I don’t want to hear that. No. If I talk like this, people say, Oh, he hates our religion. I don’t hate your religion. I just hate what you’re doing with your religion. You can believe anything you want, but what you do with it, especially about other human beings, interests me a lot. And, for me, that is where the battle begins,” he stated.
