Every child needs a hero...

This afternoon, I went for a meeting with Professor Wole Soyinka, my childhood hero before my age entered into the double digits(and who's maintained this position with me till this time), minutes after he finished a press conference. Watching the journalists stream out of the premises, I had a chance to ponder again on the affairs of a man who has remained a sentinel for Nigeria through many decades.

At the press briefing, he spoke on General Buhari's Presidential ambitions..."This intervention has been provoked, not so much by the ambitions of General Buhari to return to power at the head of a democratic Nigeria, as by declarations of support from directions that leave one totally dumbfounded. It would appear that some, myself among them, had been over complacent about the magnitude of an ambition that seemed as preposterous as the late effort of General Ibrahim Babangida to aspire yet again to the honour of presiding over a society that truly seeks a democratic future..."

When we were alone, he attended to my business, one he himself had termed ambitious- the production of "A Season of Soyinka", sometime this year; a month when I would present four of his plays and one of mine, "Who's Afraid of Wole Soyinka?", at a major venue in Lagos under different stage directors. As he wrote a reference for me in that regard, I asked to take this photo. "Go ahead", he said.

On my way back to the mainland, I could see the evening press had rolled out his statement, one headline read, "Soyinka knocks out Buhari", another, "Kongi's latest fire".

Every child needs a hero. So does every nation. Amongst those of this country's stands the man, "WS".