Speakers in the advocacy session of the 2022 edition of the annual Wole Soyinka International Cultural Exchange, WSICE, have been unveiled.
The pre-event activities of the event will hold on July 12 while the event proper will hold virtually on July 13.
The event will on July 13 feature the Advocacy Forum and Culture House reception and Students Essay Writing and Youth Essay Writing.
Three films will also be screened.
Treating the theme, “Citizenship and Nation Building… The case for Rights, Freedom & Justice,” speakers will discuss the essential ingredients towards effective mobilisation of the citizens for nation building.
According to Dr Teju Kareem, Executive Producer of the WSICE project, the theme was to capture the main issues of preoccupation in the socio-political situation of Nigeria in the global space.
The advocacy session will be prefaced by Prof. Segun Ojewuyi, the Dean of College of Arts and Media, Southern Illinois University, SIU, Carbondale, Illinois USA, and co-Executive Producer of WSICE.
The Lead Speaker is the famous lawyer-political and human rights activist, Dele Farotimi, who is renowned for his consistent critique of the prevalent political system in Nigeria, as well as the activities of the political elites via his writings and diverse broadcast mediums.
Easily remembered for his pro-bono legal service and material support for the victims of the #EndSARS shooting at the Lekki Tollgate, Dele Farotimi is also a regular columnist and writer via his well-subscribed website, www.delefarotimi.com, as well as his plethora of commentary on national affairs on major television and radio stations and social media platforms.
He is the author of two best-selling political treatise: ‘Do Not Die in their War (2016)’; and ‘Imperative of the Nigerian Revolution (2019)’
Other speakers are: the actor-social activist, Bimbo Manuel; the social worker and woman rights activist, Ier Jonathan; the broadcaster-rights activist, Ireti Bakare.
To emphasise the involvement of the youths, which is one of the cardinal objectives of the project, two youth activists have been included in the line-up; and these are Adamu Garko, a writer-teenage activist, who won the annual WSICE essay competition in 2014 and Okere Chukwuma Christian, a 2015 participant of Wole Soyinka International essay competition.
Goodwill messages are expected to be delivered by Razinat Muhammed, a professor of English Literature at the University of Abuja; Lilly Cheng, professor of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences, and Director of the Chinese Studies Institute at San Diego State University, USA.
Others are Yemi Ogunbiyi (PhD), the managing director of Tanus Communications, and close associate of Prof. Wole Soyinka; Darren Kew, associate professor and chair of the department of Conflict Resolution, HumanSsecurity, and Global Governance, and Executive Director of the Center for Peace, Democracy, and Development at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.
The session will be moderated by Victory Ashaka, a performance poet and youth activist, who is currently a student of Lagos State University, LASU.
Ashaka is a past host of the Youth Advocacy session of the programme.
WS88: Celebrating the Icon
The edition, as is traditional since inception, is to celebrate the 88th birthday anniversary (July 13) of Wole Soyinka, the “Global Humanist”, who through “his exemplary life choices and over six decades of illustrious careers of writings, activism and agency of numerous and varied interventions in global affairs, has helped to shape the cause and course of our collective humanity,” stated Kareem.
