Visionary mythopoesis in fictional and nonfictional prose followers, against the consolidated forces of rapine, lawlessness and ter-
ror that gradually and relentlessly made a bid for absolute power in the
Western and Northern regions and in the central government before the
interventions of the two military coups of. Because Soyinka, as au-
thor ofIbadan, is unable to distance himself from Maren, the protagonist
of the narrative who, after all, is none other than his Doppelganger, the
artistic control which he is able to exert on the materials in the conclud-
ing sections ofAk ́eandIsarais almost completely absent inIbadan.Onthis
point, it is indeed instructive to compare the middle sections of the nar-
rative of this memoir with that concluding section which tells of Maren’s
herculean battles against the nascent fascism of elements of the Nigerian
post-independence political class. In the former, in episodes drawn from
his high school days at the famous Government College, Ibadan, Soyinka
writes convincingly and movingly of the fear, confusion and also exhil-
aration of standing up to bullies and taking a stand on controversial
issues in religion, science and ethics which often went against the grain
of the arid, philistine conformism of his peers. By contrast, some of the
escapades narrated in the concluding sections ofIbadanwhich highlight
the promethean heroism of Maren are either unbelievably melodramatic
or plainly lacking in credibility, taste or good judgment. Perhaps the most
flawed of these is the incident at Cairo airport where, as we are told in
a mini-narrative that reads very much like an episode in the screenplay
of a Bruce Lee film, Soyinka in a bizarre physical combat singly floored
and incapacitated four of eight men armed with heavy wooden cudgels.
(–) No less wondrous is the episode which tells of the invasion of
Soyinka’s home by a gang of thugs and minions of the ruling political
party of S.L. Akintola, Premier of the Western region. This incident is
told with great relish; it narrates how Maren, Soyinka’s doppelganger
in this memoir, fooled this gang into thinking that he had the firepower
to match theirs, the murderous invaders fleeing in terrified, cowardly
disarray. The narrative, already creakily melodramatic, becomes over-
strained when the narrator actually tells of conversations between the
terrified men and the man who sent them on their mission, all expressing
their awe at the demonic power of their would-be victim-turned attacker,
these being things Maren simply could not have been privy to (Ibadan,
–).
These flaws inIbadanstand in high relief against the fact that there is
much in this memoir to match the best writings of Soyinka himself and
of the genre of autobiographical memoirs. There are indeed many sec-
tions which consolidate the claim ofIbadanto being considered a lasting