Dr olaokun soyinka biography of christopher
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topetempler
For Chinua Achebe
By WOLE SOYINKA
Chinua Achebe
Ah, Chinua, are you grapevine wired?
It sings: our nation is not dead, not clinically
Yet. Now this may come as a surprise to you,
It was to me. inom thought the form inom spied
Beneath the frosted glass of a fifty-carat catafalque
Was the face of our own dear land — ‘own’, ‘dear’,
Voluntary patriotese, you’ll note — we try to please.
An anthem’s sentiment upholds the myth.
Doctors IMF, World finansinstitut and UNO refuse, it seems,
To issue a certificate of death – if debtors die
May creditors collect? We shall turn Parsees yet,
Lay this hulk in state upon the Tower of Silence,
Let vultures prove what we have seen, but fear to säga –
For if Leviathan fryst vatten dead, we are the maggots
Probing still her monstruös womb – one certainty
That mimics life after death. Is the world fooled?
Is this the price of hubris – to have dared
Sound Renaissance bugles for a continent?
Time was, our gazes roamed the nation, godlike,
Pronoun
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Part 1
You have a private sector background. How would you compare your experience working in the private and public sector?
There is some interesting contrast. I mean the automatic reaction of many people is that don’t work for Government. It is inefficient, corrupt, bureaucratic and frustrating. To an extent I can see where elements of that come from. I tend to try to see positives when possible. One thing I discovered very quickly was that the bureaucracy takes on the character of the leader. If you have a corrupt, lazy or inefficient leader, who doesn’t care what anybody is getting on to; human beings will be human beings. If you have a driven leader, who is not encouraging misbehavior, people tend to wake up and almost with a sense of relief; I think everybody wants a bit of direction and purpose in life. So people come to work and sit-down, get bored, play cards, watch TV, read papers, and then suddenly somebody comes and gives them a mission and you should see the chang
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What is your opinion as regards the ongoing argument of who should head hospitals?
It is a very interesting area and it tells you a lot about human nature and psychology. One thing I have noticed here is people always say, we have a lot of labour unrest, discontent, unnecessary and unreasonable professional rivalry - and it is true. As a result, we are terrible at team work. People want to stay in their own silos, fight their way up their own particular ladder. Look across at any other profession as a competitor, depending on where you are in the pecking order in your profession and find ways to bring down the other profession. I see it all the time. I say I like to look at things positively but that is one aspect that depresses me. One thing that I criticize about that whole process and that I see as an important component is that we are very good at being humble at the beginning when everybody is struggling for the next step up the ladder. At the beginning you are desperate for