Thank you, Professor Biodun Jeyifo. We shall miss your intellectual perspectives on the emancipation of the “talakawa”. We shall also miss your humour, laughter, and informed polemics.
I pinched myself that I wasn’t at his 80th anniversary celebration at Muson Centre Lagos on Monday, 5 January. The inability to intervene via Zoom during the tribute session was also painful, although I enjoyed the deserved accolades.
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Now with the news of the passing of the revolutionary and literary iroko simply called BJ, it suddenly looks like a missed opportunity to say farewell, even though no one could have imagined that death was around the corner. He was lively. He interjected even before being called upon to make a formal response as the celebrant. He laughed heartily. Perhaps, unknown to us, he was bidding the world bye-bye.
The good thing, however, is that I encountered BJ on a few occasions in the recent past, during which I reiterated my admiration of his steely character and revolutionary zeal.
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One of the encounters was not that palatable but very revealing of his loyalty to revolutionary soul mates and friends. I speak of the burial of Professor Bene Madunagu, the renowned socialist fighter, feminist and lifelong partner of Professor Eddie Madunagu in Calabar last year. Despite his health challenges, BJ mustered the energy to be there for both the departed comrade and the chief mourner – Eddie. His tribute was penetrating and perceptive, touching on the personal, the political, the ideological, and the social. Vintage BJ, you might say.
To revisit the beginning. I was barely a year old on the campus of the University of Ife, when BJ came into my worldview and that of my Great Ife generation. The journey to the early encounter was the bloody police attack on the funeral procession called by the students’ union to protest the suspected ritual killing of a student, Bukola Arogundade. But, following the police assault, four other students lay dead, with the Nigeria Police ingeniously claiming they were electrocuted. I was part of the protest and got my own dose of police brutality that dark day of 7 June, 1981. It was a sad chapter that threw the campus into turmoil and rage.
BJ, as president of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) and as a defender of the right to independent student unionism, was furious. Amidst contestation over what actually transpired on the fateful day, ASUU under him took the unprecedented step of constituting an administrative panel of inquiry headed by Chief Gani Fawehinmi, with columnist Labanji Bolaji as co-member. Grieving, restless, panting, BJ was ever present during the panel’s sittings. As witness number 78, I can attest. The findings and recommendations of that panel occupy a significant place in legal jurisprudence and literature on students’ protests and the student movement of the 1980s.
Later joining the students socialist movement via the platform of the Alliance of Progressive Students (ALPS) meant that I would know BJ the more especially as one of the prominent members of the Ife socialist-marxist collective, comprising the likes of Segun Osoba, Toye Olorode, GG Darah, Dipo (Jingo) Fashina, etc.
Listening to BJ’s intellectually informed fiery polemics at the numerous campus lectures and symposiums of those days was equally delightful. He brought more excitement when he wrote and “directed” a convocation play simply titled, “Haba Director.”
“Director, haba director, haba director, this is too much oooo” was the theme song and intermittent chorus of the dramatic satire on the excesses of the political and economic elite, symbolised by the Director whose inhuman, anti-working class and anti-people irrational behaviour ultimately provoked a revolt. It was a conclusion that served as a warning to the campus and country’s ruling elites, some of whom were in the audience, even if it didn’t disguise BJ’s desire for popular or mass revolt. Vintage BJ, we might say again.
Streams of tributes have been flowing from students, friends, associates, comrades, and academics who crossed paths with BJ, revealing more about vintage moments with him. They point to the fact that with his passing, Nigeria has lost one of its finest principled fighters for the liberation of Nigeria from the shackles of imperialist and neo colonial domination and exploitation.
Thank you, Professor Biodun Jeyifo. We shall miss your intellectual perspectives on the emancipation of the “talakawa”. We shall also miss your humour, laughter, and informed polemics.
Lanre Arogundade, a member of the editorial board of Premium Times, is the executive director of International Press Centre and former president of the National Association of Nigerian Students.
