Prof. Wole Soyinka said he and the late Ghanaian poet, Kofi Awoonor who lost is life could have been together at the Westgate shopping mall shooting in Nairobi.
But He was unable to attend the Storymoja/Hay Literature Festival.
Soyinka spoke in Lagos yesterday during a memorial reading session held in honour of the late Ghanaian poet and went further to say that because of two commitments: a public conversation with a very brave individual, Karima Bennoune, an Algerian national, and the annual conference of international investigators in Tunis was the main reason he couldn't attend the program.
He said:
“My absence was particularly regrettable, because I had planned to make up for my failure to turn up for the immediate prior edition. It was at least two days after the listing of Kofi Awoonor among the victims that I even recollected the fact that the Festival was ongoing at that very time. With that realisation came another: that Kofi and I could have been splitting a bottle at that same watering hole in between events and at the end of each day. My feelings, I wish to state clearly, did not undergo any changes. The emotions of rage, hate and contempt remained on the same qualitative and quantitative levels”.
