Professor BJ’s Talakawa Liberation Series stands as a rich compendium of history, resistance, and intellectual engagement with Africa’s colonial and postcolonial experience… We wish him many happy returns in good health, and continued service to Africa and humanity.
Happy 80th Birthday to Emeritus Professor Biodun Jeyifo (BJ).
Professor BJ is a leading light in the study and world of literature in English. The theme of his birthday symposium, as well as the quality of the speakers addressing the subject, was a clear testimony to his enduring intellectual influence and scholarly legacy.
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Colonialism and colonisation are, by their very nature, inherently violent — the former as a process and the latter as its consequence. Brutal conquest was often followed by what was described as “pacification.”
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, following the Berlin Conference of 1884, African responses to colonialism can broadly be categorised into three forms: active resistance, passive resistance, and collaboration.
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Examples of active resistance include Oba Kosoko and Magaji Dan Yamusa of Keffi, who defeated and killed a British expeditionary force led by Captain Gustav Maloney in 1902. Sultan Attahiru of Sokoto was killed by British forces in the famous Battle of Burmi in 1903. His poem “Zuwan Annasara Kasar Hausa” (“The Advent of Europeans in Hausaland”) captures what was essentially a clash of civilisations.
King Jaja of Opobo stands as a powerful example of passive resistance to colonialism. His resistance, exile, poisoning, and eventual death in 1891 form an important part of Africa’s historical response to colonial domination.
The third category consisted of collaborators, who are too numerous to mention individually.
Professor BJ’s Talakawa Liberation Series stands as a rich compendium of history, resistance, and intellectual engagement with Africa’s colonial and postcolonial experience.
We wish him many happy returns in good health, and continued service to Africa and humanity.
Cheers, sir — today and always.
Yaro Yusufu Mamman is a former Nigerian ambassador to Spain.
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