October 27, 2026

One Abiding Religion

I have one abiding religion: human liberty.

Soyinka wrote these words in The Man Died, his prison memoir recounting the twenty-two months he spent largely in solitary confinement during the Nigerian Civil War, after he tried to broker a ceasefire between Biafra and the federal government. Stripped of his community, his family, and his fellow writers, the state tried to replace his identity with a cell number and enforced silence. He refused to let that isolation define him, insisting his one unbreakable loyalty was not to a tribe, a party, or a government but to the liberty that makes any true community possible. His words remind us that the communities worth belonging to are the ones we enter freely, not the ones forced on us by fear.