BYE, BIODUN

By: Folorunso Fatai Adisa

“Forever and forever farewell, Cassius. If we do meet again, why, we shall smile. If not, why then this parting was well made.” (William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 5, Scene 1)

Today is a sad day for academia, and especially for the global community of literary scholars. News reports have confirmed that the sagely Professor Biodun Jeyifo, who celebrated his 80th birthday only a few months ago, has departed from this world and joined the pantheon of great literary minds. When you arrive, kindly give our regards to the others. Greet Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o too, and tell him you have done well.

I first heard the name Jeyifo during a private conversation with Professor Olu Obafemi in his office at the Faculty of Arts, University of Ilorin. One of his former students, Professor Ibunkun Femi Dunmade, would later reference Jeyifo extensively while discussing literary criticism with me. From that moment, I became a devoted reader of his column, Talakawa Liberation Courier, in The Nation newspaper. He was a critic of global renown who deployed Marxist insight as a lens through which society could be examined and understood.

In his autobiography, the late Emeritus Professor Ayo Banjo wrote:

“The Department of English, University of Ibadan, had from the beginning maintained very high standards. By the late sixties, it had produced, in thirty years, only two first-class honours graduates — Molara Ogundipe and Dan Izevbaye. On one occasion, however, we were obliged to yield to the external examiner, Norman Jeffares of the University of Leeds. He arrived with a pile of answer booklets which he placed before him. As usual, no first class was initially awarded, though one candidate came very close. At that point, Jeffares pointed to the scripts and declared, ‘This is a first class.’ We all agreed without debate. That was how Biodun Jeyifo became the third First Class honours graduate of the Department of English.”

Professor Biodun Jeyifo would go on to justify that distinction through a lifetime of intellectual brilliance. He emerged as one of Africa’s foremost literary critics and cultural theorists, earning global respect for his profound reflections on modernity and its social and cultural tensions. He served as Professor of African and African American Studies and Comparative Literature at Harvard University and was a fellow of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research. His early critical essays significantly shaped scholarly engagement with the dramatic works of Wole Soyinka, Nobel Laureate in Literature.

Professor Biodun Jeyifo epitomised the true university ideal. He excelled in teaching, research, and service. Farewell, Professor, a maker of minds and a builder of thinkers. Though the drum has fallen silent, the guiding sound of your scholarship continues to endure across generations.

• Fly well, Baba Agba!