Soyinka shares ordeal of abduction, robbery overseas

Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, has shared a chilling account of how he was abducted and robbed while on a visit to Bucharest, Romania.

The globally celebrated writer and playwright had traveled to the country to participate in the Sibiu International Theatre Festival (FITS) one of the world’s largest performing arts gatherings that annually draws thousands of artists and audiences from across the globe.

Soyinka revealed that during his stay, he fell victim to criminals who abducted him and dispossessed him of his belongings.

In an interview with TheNEWS, the playwright recounted the experience, which unfolded shortly after his arrival in Romania.

Soyinka said he arrived in Bucharest at 12:10 a.m. in high spirits, looking forward to the festival, only for events to take a dramatic turn after he and the party meant to pick him up missed each other at the airport.

After missing his hosts at the airport, he boarded what appeared to be an official taxi to Novotel Hotel, where he was scheduled to lodge.

He said instead of heading for the hotel, the driver diverted to a deserted, dimly lit area, where he was coerced into surrendering his bank details.

“So I got into the taxi and the man drove and drove and finally we got to a spot. It was now close to 1 o’clock in the dead of the night. And I thought we were in the hotel. Then he brought out his POS. A conversation took place (I narrate all of that in the book),” he said.

“Anyway, the bottom line is that I was in effect abducted, robbed, and deposited in this strange place. I had to enter it without seeing the POS because this man kept hiding it. He was insisting ‘enter your pin, enter your pin.’

“That drama lasted inside the taxi between 25 and 30 minutes. I was deliberately entering the wrong pin, playing for time, hoping people would come out maybe from the hotel or be strolling around. It was one of those times when everybody refused to come out. Completely bare where I was. No sign.

“I didn’t discover it wasn’t a hotel until I finally got down. I was still playing for time, hoping somebody would come out of the hotel, maybe smoking cigarette, even a street worker or whatever. So, it became a battle of wills inside the car, which approached violence – he wondering who I was, what I was and I playing for time, hoping somebody would come along.

“And then you can imagine all sorts of imagination in my head. Why had he dropped me in this particular place? Was it a gang-infested area? Let’s just say it was a weird and not very comfortable kind of situation.

“Eventually, that night, anyway, I got to the hotel. I was picked up by a car and taken to Sibiu,” he said.