The annual Advocacy Lecture of the Wole Soyinka International Cultural Exchange project has come and gone. The event, in its seventh year, was held in the Ijegba Forest Theatre, an amphitheatre located in the neighbourhood of the residence of Nobel laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, in Abeokuta, capital of Ogun State.
Although it was scheduled to begin at 7pm, the event, which also featured a rich line-up of activities, including cultural displays by the Ogun State Cultural Troupe, did not start until about two hours later.
This year’s edition was dedicated to leading dramatist, Prof. Femi Osofisan, who clocked 70 a few weeks ago, and chaired by Prof. Folabo Ajayi-Soyinka, Emeritus Professor of Gender Studies and Theatre, University of Kansas, USA.
Keynote lectures were delivered by Comrade Tunde Fagbenle and  Prof. Segun Ojewuyi of the Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Illinois.
The event was themed Corruption: A battle for the arts. It was intended to discuss how the arts, using its civilising tools, could effectively intervene in the ongoing campaign to rid Nigeria of corruption.
In his welcome address to the gathering, Osofisan set the tone for the lecture by paying tribute to Prof. Wole Soyinka, who had turned 82 on the same day. Claiming that he was part of Soyinka’s legacy to the arts and culture, he said, “Some of us started writing because he inspired us to make the arts a kind of advocacy for social justice.”
The writer and former President of the Association of Nigerian Authors noted that most Nigerians often made the error of interpreting corruption as if it were just a monetary issue or solely concerned about the amount of money stolen at any point in time. And then, decrying the growing incidence of corruption, he added, “There is so much corruption in the country now that sometimes when I wake up in the morning I feel like screaming ‘corruption!’.
 At this point, he broke into a popular Yoruba folk song for emphasis and, to the delight of the gathering, attempted a few bata dance steps as the drums quickly responded to his singing. But that unexpected bit of performance ended abruptly.
Resuming his address, Osofisan described corruption as a moral burden. He said, “Corruption starts from very small things. It’s a progression that starts from within every Nigerian and feeds on individual moral laxity. From there, greed takes over.”
Noting that greed had virtually taken over the country, the celebrated playwright and scholar told the gathering that it would require a serious battle to wipe away corruption from the Nigerian society. “Corruption cannot go away unless we all fight it and this is where the arts come in. Corruption will not just change by itself. We have to fight for it and we have to fight very hard,” he warned.
In his keynote lecture, Fagbenle noted that from the outset the arts had been as immersed in corruption as the rest of the society. Then urging stakeholders in the arts and culture sector to join the battle against the scourge by confronting it within the sector itself, he said, “It is a case of asking the physician to heal himself. By the arts, of course, we mean the whole gamut of the arts, including the performing arts, music, television and film.”
Before the gathering, which was dominated by school children, he said that one of the sad effects of the incidence of corruption in the country was the destruction of the fabric of the Nigerian society and the fact that Nigeria is typecast as the “incubating room” for corrupt practices in the world.
Describing further the extent of the damage, in physical and psychological terms, which corruption had inflicted on the society and the implication on the future, Fagbenle concluded that without the arts, the ongoing fight against corruption would be very difficult to win.
On his part, Ojewuyi, focusing on the text of Wole Soyinka’s play, Death and the King’s Horseman,   attempted to establish a connection between political corruption as it affects the Nigerian society and spiritual corruption. “The lack of compass in our spiritual lives is the cause of the political misdirection and corruption that we are experiencing in the country,” he said.
The programme of the event was interspersed with colourful performances, including a dramatic reading of excerpts from The Lost Poetry of Prof. Wole Soyinka by Yinka Williams and a thought-provoking parody of the present social, economic and political situation in the country by the Crown Troupe of Africa.
One of the interesting features is the symbolic burning of an effigy of ‘corruption’, clearly spelt out in a descending order, on a tree. Every other letter was consumed in the fire, except ‘c’ and ‘o’. Finally, all the artists in attendance, led by ace choreographer, Peter Badejo, performed a traditional ritual of laying curses on all corrupt people in the country and in a more profound way, on the spirit of corruption.