AN AUDIENCE with world-acclaimed Nigerian playwright and poet Wole Soyinka is indeed a moment in the presence of greatness.

A man used to being heard, his theatre voice peaks not a decibel higher than a conversational tone.

Mine was one of seven pairs of ears hanging on to his every word; the lunch to promote his memoirs You Must Set Forth at Dawn only served to affirm why the itinerant Nobel laureate was such a sought-after lecturer at universities around the world.

He stops short of saying Nelson Mandela is a madman and from his vast vocabulary - thanks to a lifetime of writing and studies in Greek, English and history - hauls out another word to make the point that the 92-year-old former statesman is in a league of his own.

This is his response to the forgiving nature of Mandela, a virtue Soyinka confesses he does not possess.

In the book he writes about how a young woman saw past his disguise at the tennis in Wimbledon to come and introduce herself. As fate would have it, the lass was Sani Abacha's daughter!

Arch-nemesis does not even begin to describe the dynamics of the Abacha-Soyinka relationship.

He writes disparagingly about Abacha - the demented, diminutive, deceased dictator.

The son of a staunch Christian mother and a school principal, Soyinka is unforgiving of Abacha.

He has no kinder words either for Olusegun Obasanjo.

He told someone that his passion for the written word came from his childhood in Abeokuta, in the west of his motherland, where he was inspired by his "long family of word-spinners" from whom he also "imbibed" his sense of justice.

It is no doubt this brand of justice that has condemned Abacha and his goons to be the eternal scum of the world in his book. While Mandela spent his years of incarceration denied access to the world, Soyinka's gaol was exile. And did he shout from the rooftops!

The book attests to his status as "an outspoken critic of Nigeria's past tyrannies" and those who have had the rare honour to write about him have this to say: "If the spirit of African democracy has a voice and a face, they belong to Wole Soyinka."

In this, the year of his 76th birthday, he's now safely back home and has founded a political party. "But starting a political party does not mean running for high office," Soyinka says.

His spirituality, not religion, tells him to harbour no ill-feelings against Abacha's little girl, he says.

But her father is another kettle of fish altogether.

His trademark mop of fine white hair and beard shaking in incredulity, he does not understand how Mandela can leave prison to drink at the table of brotherhood with the likes of Dr Percy Yutar, the man who called for the death penalty at their Rivonia Trial.

It is the same Mandela who took tea and koeksisters with Bettie Verwoerd, wife of the architect of apartheid.

The man of letters owns up: he's not infallible.

But his sagacity aside, does it really take Soyinka to remind us what a gem we have in Mandela, the very personification of forgiveness?