Professor wole soyinka 1020 by 980

Nigerian Nobel Prize winner, Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka popularly known as Wole Soyinka, has turned 89 years.

The world-renowned professor was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, for “in a wide cultural perspective and with poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence”.

He is the first sub-Saharan African to be honoured in that category.

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 Below are some things to know about the icon:

• Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta.

  In 1954, he attended Government College in Ibadan,[5] and subsequently University College Ibadan and the University of Leeds in England. After studying in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London.

• As an activist, in 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections.

  In 1967, during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon