Wole Soyinka leads Pyrates confraternity members to burial of colleague in Ibadan

‎A video currently circulating online has shown Nobel laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, leading members of the Pyrates confraternity to pay their last respects to Emeritus Professor Biodun Jeyifo.

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‎It was learnt that Jeyifo, a former ASUU president, died at the age of 80. Soyinka, clad alongside Pyrates members in their signature red attire, attended the burial today in Ibadan in Oyo State.

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‎Soyinka, who is one of the founding fathers of the Pyrates confraternity, has repeatedly insisted that it is not a secret cult, stressing that the registered organisation, far from being a bloodthirsty secret cult, is dedicated to advocating for justice and the betterment of Nigeria.

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‎In one of his interviews, the scholar expressed his frustration about what he called their ignorance about the association’s objectives.

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‎Soyinka chastised the public, which has given the confraternity a bad name and hanged it.

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‎He wondered why intelligent Nigerians chose to equate a secret cult with the confraternity.

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‎The Nobel laureate said he would continue to bear with pride the ‘’guilt of’’ being a Pyrates, noting that such “guilt is the guilt of the ignorance and the stubbornness of the outer society”.

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‎“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 said.

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