•Foremost Historian at 85
Nigeria’s pre-eminent historian and scholar of global renown, Jacob Festus Ade Ajayi, University of Ibadan Emeritus Professor, turned 85 on May 26. Associates, collaborators, former students, friends and admirers joined his family to celebrate the milestone in ceremonies that accorded with his life-long devotion to matters intellectual and with his characteristic modesty.
First, his professional colleagues held a symposium on African historiography and his immense contributions to that field. In Nigeria, Dr Kenneth Dike had blazed the trail with his seminal doctoral dissertation for the University of London, later published as Trade and Politics in the Niger Delta. But it was under Ade Ajayi’s leadership as chair of History in Ibadan that the field reached full flowering
The enduring legacy of his leadership is what came to be known as the Ibadan School of History. Noted for its nationalist undertones, the Ibadan School was a direct response to European scholars who claimed that Africa had no history worth studying beyond the activities of European colonialists and adventurers on the continent.
Ajayi dismissed that imperialist claim in a phrase that would be hard to match for its majestic simplicity and profound poignancy. The colonial intrusion, he wrote, was nothing more than “an episode” in the history of Africa. The absence of written records by which Western historians set great store was no barrier to the reconstruction of the African past, he argued. He insisted on the validity of oral sources subjected to the established standards of verification, and on a multi-disciplinary approach to the study of History.
His own prodigious output of books, book chapters, monographs, journal articles, most of them published after he was appointed a professor at the relatively young age of 35, was replicated in the comprehensiveness of the seminal works that came out of the Ibadan School. Leading universities and research institutions across the world sought his services and piled him with their highest honours.
Then symposium was followed the next day by a public lecture that prefaced the presentation of a book on Ade Ajayi’s life and career, edited by two of his former students who have gone on to distinguish themselves in scholarship and public service, Professor Akinjide Osuntokun and Professor Michael Omolewa. Featuring contributions by Ade Ajayi’s fellow academics in Nigeria and abroad, former colleagues, students and members of his family, it is an ennobling study in dedication, humility, grace under pressure, and service.
Nor has Ade Ajayi’s career been distinguished only by scholarship. He has been an outstanding administrator as well. As vice chancellor, he embarked on construction projects and a staff development programme and curriculum reform that transformed the University of Lagos almost beyond recognition. His tenure ended on a sad note when he was dismissed, following the death of a student during a demonstration the Federal Military Government said he ought to have pre-empted, as if the university was a military barracks and the vice chancellor a garrison commander.
Years later, a grateful country conferred him with its highest recognition for distinguished intellectual achievement, the National Order of Merit. Most fittingly, he was awarded the Centennial Medal, one of 100 Nigerians to be so honoured on the occasion of Centenary of the amalgamation, his preferment being in the category of “Distinguished Academics.”
Sadly, History, the discipline in which Ade Ajayi made a mark on the world’s stage, is no longer taught in Nigerian schools. It has instead been enfolded in “social science.” It is doubtful whether Nigeria can produce another Ade Ajayi. The nation will be the poorer for being deprived of the insights and clarity that he and the Ibadan School brought to bear on significant aspects of our existence.
