NOBEL Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, on Sunday, said he graduated with Second Class Upper Division and not Third Class Honour from the University College, Ibadan, as widely believed.
He said this while fielding
questions from 79 secondary school students drawn from different parts of the
country, in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, as part of 2013 Open Door Series
project, “Memoirs of Our Future,” an international cultural exchange programme
organised to mark his 79th birthday.
The programme was organised by
a Lagos-based multi-media company, Zmirage, in collaboration with the Ogun
State government.
Soyinka told the students that
he decided to open up on the matter as a mark of respect for them, while urging
the students, especially those living in violence-prone areas of the North, not
to be discouraged by the activities of Boko Haram.
He admonished the students not
to be satisfied with failure, but to strive to be the best in all their
undertakings, while tasking President Goodluck Jonathan-led Federal Government
and state governors to eliminate barriers and create conducive environment for
Nigerians to access qualitative education.
The literary icon enjoined the
students not to be discouraged by certain negative events, but should rather
draw inspiration from the life of a 16-year-old Pakistani girl, Malala
Yousafzai, who was shot in the head on October 9, 2012 by Taliban fighters over
her campaign for girl-child education in Pakistan.
He told the students that
Malala, on Friday, addressed the maiden United Nations Youth Assembly, where
she called on world leaders to provide free education to all children and
further vowed not to relent in her campaign.
Professor Soyinka asked the
federal and state governments to obtain the speech of Malala and make it
available to all libraries, schools and archives, to serve as reference point
for upcoming generations.
“It looks very negative and
hopeless. We must not allow ourselves to be discouraged. And the fact that
people are still going to schools in those areas (violence-prone areas of
northern Nigeria) shows that we should not be discouraged. You are not a
complete human being if you are not educated, schooled or cultured.
“No matter what goes around
you, you (students) must insist on your education. I am demanding from
governors and the Federal Government to obtain the speech of that young girl
(Malala), burn it into CDs (compact discs) and make it available to all
libraries, schools and archives,” he said.
Soyinka said he would have
loved to become an architect or a trained musician, and described his first
teacher (one Mr Olagbaju) as his role model.
“I would have loved to be an
architect or a musician, not an amateur but a trained one, and if I have the
opportunity to sit behind a pilot in the plane, I would have loved to be an
airplane pilot. When I left school, I wanted to be a journalist. I actually sat
for an exam to be absolved in Daily Times…but after the exam, I was told that I
wrote a short story and not a news story. So, I was not taken. Thank goodness,
I did not become a journalist,” he added.
The Ogun State governor,
Senator Ibikunle Amosun, had earlier urged the students not to relent in their
educational pursuits.
He described Soyinka as “a
world citizen,” while he also advised the participants in the essay competition
to emulate the life of the Nobel Laureate.
0 comments:
Post a Comment