A revelation: the title of this tribute to Kunle Ajibade and Femi Falana derives from an essay by T.S. Eliot (Nobel Literature Laureate, 1948), “Tradition and the Individua Talent”. For upper level undergraduate and graduate level students of English and Comparative Literature in the English-speaking world, Eliot’s essay is perhaps second to none in the awe that it inspires in teachers and students alike. Well, let us say that that was the state of things in my days as both an undergraduate and a grad student, at home and abroad. Here is the central argument of the essay, audaciously compressed into a single sentence: Tradition weighs heavily on all poets, so much so that only poets of outstanding individual talent can – and must – do what they want with tradition; indeed, it is the through the transformative agency of the individual talent of extraordinarily gifted poets that tradition itself survives and grows.
From the title of this tribute, it can be seen that for the word, “tradition”, I have substituted “institution”. Does this therefore mean that by this substitution I am suggesting that the institutions or professions of our two celebrants – journalism and law – weigh so heavily on them that it is to their individual talent and courage that we must look for the meritorious contributions for which they have been extensively hailed on the occasion of their 60th birthday anniversary? In other words, following the example of Eliot’s famous essay, am I suggesting that it is not because of but in spite of their respective professions – journalism and the law, the press and the bench – that Kunle and Femi have been so successful, so widely respected? Yes, that is what I am suggesting – but I am going well beyond Eliot in my observations and reflections in this tribute.
In his celebrated essay, Eliot had in mind the tradition of the entire poetic heritage of the Western world, from classical antiquity to the modern age. Moreover, he thought of this tradition as not only a unity but also a peerless heritage. Let us put the matter squarely: while not being a supremacist in the essay, Eliot was nonetheless sanguine about the value, the majesty if you like, of the Western poetic heritage. From this angle of perception, it will be readily accepted that no one can speak of institutions with the kind of almost worshipful veneration with which Eliot speaks of tradition in his famous essay. Why so?
Famously or infamously as the case may, institutions are extremely prone to corruption, to corruptibility. Yes, but so also are traditions. Well, that is true, but corruption and corruptibility are far more common, far more manifest in institutions. Think also of this fact: in his essay, Eliot had in mind a tradition which, as far as he was concerned, had never been colonized, never been subjugated by powers or forces alien to the Western world. Who does not know that at independence in virtually all the regions and nations of the formerly colonized, non-western world, institutions imposed on entire nations and local communities had been so alienated and alienating that new ones had to be built from scratch? Who does not know that up till the present day, we are still in the dark, we are still groping in our efforts to build solid, serviceable and sustaining institutions?
In almost all the tributes and salutations to Kunle and Femi that I have read, their personal qualities have been identified not in isolation, but in connection with their achievements in their chosen professions. But on the whole, the compliments, the encomiums have taken the connection between their personal talents and achievements and their professions for granted. Since I met both of them at O.A.U., Ife, long before they became the distinguished and universally respected journalist and lawyer that they are, respectively, today, I can confirm that their professions did not make them who they are; rather they brought into their respective professions who they were. More precisely, they brought into their professions who-they-were-in-the-making when I first met them more than three decades ago.
Human beings are not made like the seed of the acorn that will grow into an oak tree whether it likes it or not. This is both a tragedy and a wonderful opportunity. It is a tragedy because we human beings could use the assurance, the certainty that all things being equal, like the acorn that will inevitably become an oak tree, every child will grow into a solid, senescent and worthy adult. I say this with the keen sorrow of one who has just lost a 46-year old niece. But it is also an opportunity that we are not like the acorn seed because the future for us humans is more open, more flexible and more responsive to the vagaries and uncertainties of nature and experience.
Kunle was my student as both an undergraduate and graduate student at O.A.U., Ife and even though he was closer to me than many of the other cherished students that I taught at that institution, I swear that I did not know then that the woman he would marry would be called Bunmi and the sons they together produce would be Folarin and Mayowa. Yes, I am being deliberately facetious here, but all the same, it has been a great joy to me that the lean, slightly gangling, self-effacing but endlessly mirthful young man that I first met at O.A.U., Ife went on to create an incredibly blessed life with and for Bunmi and their gifted sons. From that initial period to the present, the aura of a secular saint that one immediately felt about him has not only never left Kunle but has grown in substance and depth.
Kunle was one of my most avid, imaginative and inquisitive students and many were the futile attempts that I made to restrain his enthusiasms, to contain his quiet but unmistakable reserves of energy. Teachers project onto their students what they think about themselves: I tended to see my own kind of restlessness at that stage of my young adulthood in students close to me. Kunle responded to this intimation from me in his own inimitable way – by threading and weaving his own restless energy through a loom of stolid calmness. I have never fully explained this satisfactorily to myself, but in my mind, his essence has always seemed to me akin to that of Orunmila – without, of course, the otherworldly metaphysics with which the wisdom and equanimity of that deity are clothed. When the season of anomy came and Kunle paid the price in a cruel and wounding incarceration in Sani Abacha’s dungeons, this deeply ingrained trait would come to be the source of his literal and symbolic salvation – but that was in a future that I will presently briefly explore in this tribute.
Femi was never directly my student but since he was as present in the intellectual circles of productions and debates in the arts, the humanities and politics dominated by the students of the Arts Faculty, he might as well have been one of my/our students. Indeed, I remember distinctly that Femi was in my overloaded15-seater Volkswagen Kombi bus when, sometime in 1982, I drove a group from Ife to U.I. to listen to the Inaugural Lecture of the late Abiola Irele. Titled “In Praise of Alienation”, the lecture did not disappoint us on the expectations that made us all head to Ibadan to be part of the audience at its formal delivery. As expected, it was very thought-provoking, so much so that all the way back to Ife and for the next couple of weeks, the lecture dominated our conversations. And Femi, who was a student in the Faculty of Law, was as engaged as any student of the Arts Faculty in that debate that was deeply philosophical.
Why do I remember so clearly that Femi was in that group that day in 1982? Was it because he was the only student who was not from our Faculty? No, because there were students from other faculties beside Femi in that Kombi bus. As a matter of fact, this was the wonderful thing about O.A.U., Ife, at the time: the intellectual ferment, the renaissance in ideas, perspectives and orientations was as interdisciplinary as it was transdisciplinary. It was a great crossroads of the arts, the human sciences and the “hard”, natural sciences. For instance, in our Marxist or Socialist group, there were several literary critics, a historian, two physicists, a couple of botanists, a theologian and a linguist, not leaving out two philosophers, and a social psychologist. More broadly and with regard to the campus-wide milieu, scholars and administrators of a distinct liberal humanist persuasion were countable in their dozens. For instance, let it be known that when Obasanjo purged many universities of radicals and progressives in 1978, O.A.U., Ife, was the only university in the country that refused to follow the dictates of Dodan Barracks, the dreaded, notorious headquarters of military dictatorship at the time. How did this happen? Simple: the incumbent Vice Chancellor at the time, the late and revered Ojetunji Aboyade, refused to rubberstamp the orders from Obasanjo to get rid of “us”. WS was in Ife at the time; so was the late Ola Rotimi; so was Itse Sagay; so were many others too numerous for me to identify here.
This has not been a digression from the topic at hand, this being Femi Falana in his student days. I remember him in that trip to U.I. to hear Irele’s Inaugural Lecture, I remember him distinctly in the large, motley crowd of activists, progressives and patriots because he stood out. To stand out in that time and place was a singular accomplishment, an indication of things to come. Femi stood out then – as he stands out now – not because he wanted to win a popularity contest but because to virtually all students and faculty, he was one of the most outspoken, one of the most dependable, one of the most selfless activists of his generation. Much later, I would find out that he had attended a Roman Catholic seminary and might very well have joined the priesthood. If only for the sake of his wife, Funmi, and their son, Falz the Bahd Guy, we must forever remain grateful that he did not follow that path. I don’t know which order of priests he would have joined, but even before that part of his biography became known to me, I had always secretly thought of him in the light of a mixture of Franciscan altruism and Jesuit rigour!
It is a great thing, an almost unquantifiable achievement for one to be deeply and genuinely liked and respected by colleagues in one’s profession. But only as long as one also respects and venerates the profession, its leading figures, its practices, its reputation. Ah, the reputation, the profile of lawyers – the bench and the bar – in our country! And the press, the confraternity of journalists? Perhaps not as ugly and odious as that of lawyers, magistrates and judges, but up there among some of the most suspicious like the police and the tax, levies and rates collectors. When we praise people like Kunle and Femi, why are we silent about their professions as institutions that share a big part of the corruption, the decadence that we see in virtually all our institutions? At the very moment when Kunle was languishing in Abacha’s dungeons falsely accused by the dictator of involvement in a coup that everyone knew was a phantom coup, the Nigerian press was filed with prominent journalists who not only supported Abacha but generally preferred military rule to all forms of democratic governance in our country and our continent. And lawyers then and now? Is it not the case that terrible corruptions that do not happen in other nations of the planet take place here in our country among our lawyers in particular and in the profession of law in general?
I wish to end this tribute by stating loudly and clearly that I am not singing a hymn to individual heroism. Yes, I have written mostly about the individual talent and courage of Kunle Ajibade and Femi Falana. But my emphasis, my gaze has been fixed on institutions as supra-individual entities. Both of our celebrants have always worked with and through organizations and collectives of like-minded patriots and progressives. The story of Kunle’s travails and triumphs under military dictatorship is inseparable from the larger story of the collective heroism of that outstanding newsmagazine, The News, together with the comrades with whom Kunle built it into one of the most consequential media organization in the history of the country. On this point, Femi must learn to work more with and through caucuses and formations of progressive, dedicated lawyers. I have said this to him privately; he will perhaps indulge me in saying it publicly in this tribute.
Sixty is a long way to the final, everlasting exit that awaits all members of our species; may you both tarry long and in good health on this side of the great divide. There is still a lot to do. I am particularly pleased by the title of the symposium held in your honour, Kunle. Yes, Nigeria will have a bright future, but the task is collective, unending. Ise si ku lopolopo; ko ni re yin o, ko ni re wa o!
Biodun Jeyifo
bjeyifo@fas.harvard.edu