Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet and essayist Wole Soyinka’s rumored death has been debunked by his son.
The Nobel Laureate’s alleged death was announced by an account supposedly belonging to Abdulrazak Gurnar, winner of the 2021 Nobel prize for literature, said Soyinka is dead.
“I got a call from Nigeria. Wole Soyinka died suddenly a few minutes ago. A terrible news,” the post on Monday, October 11 read.
But eagle eyed Twitter users were quick to notice some red flags.
The first red flag was the use of a countable noun article for “news” — “a… news”.
Grammatically, “news” is uncountable and a Nobel laureate would know that.
The post garnered over 150 retweets and 250 likes in a short while with some expressing their condolences .
But Soyinka’s son, Ilemakin, laughed off the rumors.
“The rumour has been going round since last week. Soyinka is alive when last I checked,” he said to THECableNg.
The account already has 14,000 followers.
In announcing Gurnah’s Nobel prize win on Friday, the BBC had tagged the fake account, but Lola Shoneyin, Nigerian author, quoted the tweet, pointing out that Gurnah is not Twitter user.
“During my short exchange with Prof Abdulrazak Gurnah a few minutes ago, he stated, I am not a Twitter user. Please take note,” the post reads.
As at press time, all tweets on the said account have been deleted.
