Pyrates Not A Secret Cult – Soyinka Insist
Prof Wole Soyinka, Nigerian playwright and poet[/caption]
Nigerian playwright and poet, Prof Wole Soyinka has canned the mentality and believe among majority of Nigerians that the National Association of Seadogs (aka Pyrates Confraternity) which he jointly formed with 6 others, 64-years ago is a secret cult.
The University of Ibadan graduate reprimanded those who believe the Pyrates is a cult, saying that they are ignorant of the association’s objectives.
He also wondered why intelligent and knowledgeable Nigerians chose to misplace the difference between a secret cult with the confraternity.
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He said: “Who wants to rehabilitate the image of what? There is no image that I know of the Pyrates Confraternity, which needs rehabilitating with anybody. If people choose to be ignorant and yet to pronounce on the object of their ignorance, well, who is to blame for that?
“If a public as intelligent and knowledgeable as we have in Nigeria chooses to equate the description secret cult with the word confraternity, well, whose fault is that? Go back to school and go and learn the difference between secret cult and confraternity.
“I am saying that many comments that I have heard and read make it very clear that 99 per cent of those who read or speak in public simply do not understand that there is a world of difference between a secret cult and a confraternity or a fraternity. There is a veneer of the cultic in the Pyrates Confraternity but that does not make the Pyrates a secret cult, and even less an evil secret cult,” Soyinka added.
Soyinka insisted he would not relent to bear with pride the ‘’guilt of’’ being a Pyrates, stating that such “guilt is the guilt of the ignorance and the stubbornness of the outer society”.
