By Sola Ojewusi
In a rare convergence of political power and literary genius, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva yesterday welcomed Nigerian Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, in Brasília. The encounter unfolded on the sidelines of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s state visit to the South American nation, adding a cultural resonance to the corridors of diplomacy.
The meeting was more than ceremonial. Soyinka, Africa’s first Nobel laureate in Literature, presented President Lula with a copy of his seminal work Mito, Literatura e o Mundo Africano (Myth, Literature and the African World), a text that has long challenged and enlightened scholars about the spiritual, historical, and cultural depths of Africa.
In that gesture—the handing over of words that traverse myth and reality, literature and politics—Soyinka offered Brazil a bridge: a reminder of its own deep African roots, its long entanglement with the continent through history, and the cultural energies that still shape its identity.
President Lula, who has often spoken of Brazil as the “largest African nation outside Africa,” received the book with warmth and respect. For Brazil, where Afro-Brazilian traditions infuse religion, music, politics, and identity, Soyinka’s presence was more than symbolic. It was a return of the African intellectual spirit to a land where millions of enslaved Africans once dreamed of freedom and dignity.
The meeting cast a new light on Tinubu’s state visit, suggesting that diplomacy is not only conducted in treaties and trade agreements but also in the exchange of stories, memory, and imagination.
Yesterday in Brasília, power shook hands with poetry, politics bowed before myth, and the African world stood reflected in the embrace of its far-flung children.
