Mohammed Shosanya
Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, Director, Center For International Advanced Professional Studies (CIAPS), Lagos, Prof. Anthony Kila, among other dignitaries, will Friday formally unveil a book: “The Putin Files.”
Prof. Kila,in a statement, noted that the programme, which is billed to hold on Friday, June 16, at Freedom Park, 1 Hospital Road, Lagos Island, as well as virtually via Zoom: ID — 819 6827 6619 | Passcode: Kongi, is also scheduled for 2pm.
According to the statement,the event, the event will feature readings from the book by Soyinka, as well as some members of the audience.
It said: “There will also be a conversation between the Nobel laureate and Kila, a professor of Strategy and Development, Political Economist and a well-known public affairs analyst and newspaper columnist.”
Besides,the session will afford guests the opportunity of engaging with Soyinka on the subject of the book, the statement added.
Soyinka said: “With typical ardency, takes on the still unfolding and increasingly brutal war in Ukraine and what its resolution – one way or another – might portend for the future of our very fragile continent.”
Speaking on the subject of the book, Soyinka was quoted in the statement as saying: “…But why Putin? Why has he overtaken others as the most deserving, today, of my deadly doggerel? …why should Africa, or any entity that relates to that continent poke her nose in Putin’s business?
“Of course, that is assuming that the ongoing human catastrophe in the Ukraine is strictly Putin’s business to begin with.The series was designed to provide a platform for regular public engagement on social, cultural and political issues in Nigeria, Africa and globally”, the statement added.
The themes of the Intervention series, as Soyinka states in the introduction to the series, vary literally from the sublime to the ridiculous, from national foibles to the tragic face of national existence, from citizen derelictions and delinquencies to government criminalities and betrayal of trust, from the celebration of life and other eulogies to lamentations. Failed projects.
“Occasional triumphs. They are narratives of the ‘bad, the good, and the ugly’ in encounters the high and low. National questions, the quest for genuine federalism, the theocratic menace and the quest for parity in resources, and attachment to identity.
“The series are intended, basically, ‘for the records’, handy reference pamphlets of what has been said in the past.”
