Olayinka Oyegbile
If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth writing – Benjamin Franklin
HOW do you begin to write about a man you never met in life but you can claim to have known very well? Is this not a contradiction? How can you know a man you never met physically “very well”? How can you write about a man whose path and yours never crossed, even for once in life; a man who lived thousands of miles away from you and who whenever he visited home while he was alive never knew you nor know that you existed?
He was a teacher of many but was never your teacher, at least not directly. While he was at home plying his trade as a university teacher in the southwest you’re a student in the north-western part of the country. When situation at home became hot and unbearable for his kind of intellectual brand he had to join the movement abroad; after all intellect has no boundary. He moved to America and became a star intellectual. It was while he was still at home that I met him through his incisive writings on the pages of The Guardian literary series.
I still remember some of his essays in that series and some of them I used in my literature assignments as an undergraduate student. I was awed by his clarity of thought and how he brought insights into some of the novels I had read and his interpretations and conclusions were always for me on point. It was this that made me, among others who wrote for the series then, to look forward to reading his contributions. I must confess that at the initial stage, I’d thought because of his first name, Tejumola, that he was a woman. I had an aunty who was named as such and a few others bearing that name that I knew then were women! So it was a revelation to me the day I saw his illustration (I think) along with one of his essays that I knew he was a man.
The news of his death in Wisconsin-Madison in the United States of America sneaked into the social media in the early hours of Sunday, December 1. He had died on Saturday. When I first saw the posting on a WhatsApp group I belong to, I thought it was one of those postings that people often do and later you find out it is not so. I was shocked. I then looked at the name of the person who posted it on the group forum. It was Jahman Anikulapo.
I was immediately crestfallen. There was no need for me to doubt the credibility of the posting. Jahman is a frontline culture activist and journalist who does not deal in flippant and true news or rumours. He was one time editor of The Guardian on Sunday after many years of serving as Arts editor. I need no further confirmation to know it is the gospel truth. How could death have snatched Prof Olaniyan few months after Prof Pius Adesanmi? What is happening to Nigeria’s intellectual storehouse in the Diaspora?
It was only in January this year that I had to travel to Ibadan just to buy a copy of Prof Olaniyan’s book on Fela. I had for many years searched for the book and was happy when I got my own copy. This year has been really grim reaping, taking away our intellectual lodestars at their prime: Adesanmi at 49 and now Olaniyan at 60.
It is a long time that the death of someone I never met had pained me so much. But I can claim to know him because I have read his articles, and his book on Fela which had been lying on my bookshelf since January when I bought it is now being read in his honour.
I am shocked of words to go further. I am still in a state of disbelief thinking that someone would issue a statement and say it was a joke, that Prof Olaniyan is not dead and that it was a case of mistaken identity.
Eja nla lo lomi
Iku mu eni nla lo
Sun re o
Tejumola omo Olaniyan
Riri di oju ala
Odi arin nako
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