BY: Omoniyi Ibietan
Very few people have had the grace to live a short yet fruitful life but you had the privilege to be among the few. Not many scholars have the grace to be so fecund but you are among the tribe whose intellectual fecundity was constant like day and night. Very few Nigerians in the diasporan community have their spirit so organically connected to their ancestral homelands and remained so patriotic but you also made the sparsely populated team.
Your passion, energy, desire and unconquered spirit to push the frontiers of ignorance and misgovernance to their cliffs distinguished you as a real intellectual and social entrepreneur. Your unceasing search for every man to attain the fullness of his potential is remarkable. From your source – the Yagba tribe of the Yoruba ethnic nationality in Kogi State to Accra, to Nairobi (where you were headed on the fatal journey), to Cairo, to Johannesburg, to Europe, to the North American continent where you were based, the message you carried about was unequivocal, MAN MUST CONQUER TYRANNY AND IGNORANCE.
In the process you built acquaintances, friendships and brotherhoods, so much that it became hollow for some of us to refer to you as a friend in a possessive manner because you became a friend to many. We couldn’t appropriate you to ourselves as your brothers because you became a brother to many. From Ghana where you inspired hundreds of young scholars annually at the conference for emerging scholars, to the virtual space where you deployed your intellection to articulate how we can redeem our debacle as a blessed continent, you continually uplifted and rekindled the spirit of renaissance, projecting how and why the forces of logic and knowledge will ultimately triumph over the logic of force and bankruptcy.
Whatever happened to the software of that Boeing 737 Max 8 we do not know, but it crashed, took your life and the lives of all others on board, many of them with your type of spirit. So you died with many members of your tribe. Your transition has left us with a permanent injury. We are so badly injured, it is so difficult to memorialize you. As Ngugi Wa’Thiongo counselled in that perceptively illustrative novel, we will weep not. We will continue the ‘fight’ until victory is assured. As long as we have breathe, and hale and hearty, will continue from where you stopped as a leading light of progressive scholarship in Africa. THE AFRICAN DOCTORAL LOUNGE is an eloquent testimony to your large-heartedness and progressivism.
Okun Baba, wo gbiyanju, seun re!
Sleep well brother. May God forgive your sins and those of other passengers on that flight and grant you all peaceful and perfect sleep.