-By TOBI CALEB
UNIBADAN, IBADAN – The University of Ibadan has named its Arts Theatre after Professor Wole Soyinka.
According to Dr. Awosanmi, head of the Department of Theatre Arts, the university council and senate made the move in recognition of Soyinka’s global status as a writer-activist and as the first African Head of the department (founded in 1963).
The renaming of the Arts Theatre as the Wole Soyinka Theatre took place on Tuesday July 31, at an unveiling that was combined with the 2nd Geoffrey Axworthy Lecture, instituted in honour of Geoffrey Axworthy, the founding Head of the Department of Theatre Arts.
The Arts Theatre is one of the oldest buildings in the University, having been constructed in 1955 with a generous grant from the Rockefella Foundation, it has assisted in producing an enormous size of human resource for the Nigerian nation’s and indeed, Africa’s creative and culture industry, talk more of the media, civil service, banking, oil and gas, and so on.
Professor Wole Soyinka was a student of the University of Ibadan from 1952 to 1954, he became a Nobel Laureate in 1986.