On July 2, 2017, Professor Abiola Irele, a celebrated Nigerian academic, best known as the “doyen” of Africanist literary scholarship, passed away. He attended Nigeria’s premier university, University of Ibadan, from where he graduated with a bachelors’ degree in 1960. Following his graduation from Ibadan, he proceeded to Paris, France, to study the French language. He ended up with a Ph.D. in French from the University of Paris, Sorbonne, in 1966. He held successive teaching positions at the University of Ghana, University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University) and the University of Ibadan, his alma mater.
In 1989, Professor Irele joined the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, U.S.A, as a Professor of African, French and Comparative Literature. From the Ohio State University (OSU), Irele returned to Nigeria, where he took up the position of Provost at the newly established Kwara State University in Ilorin, Nigeria. Contemporaneously, he joined the faculty of Harvard University as a Visiting Professor of African and African American Studies and Romance Languages and Literatures, in the U.S.
Professor Irele was born in Ora, Nigeria of Edo parentage. However, as a result of successive domicile in Enugu in the East, Lagos in the West and in his native Ora in the Midwest, he was fluent in Igbo, Yoruba and in his mother tongue, Ora. After returning to Lagos in 1944, Yoruba became the predominant Nigerian language he spoke. Of course, he could also speak the English language and mastered the French language thoroughly. He was, therefore, fluent in at least five languages.
In many ways, Nigeria is a remarkable country. Apart from its demographic distinction as the most populous black country in the world, which is an accident of history; it has produced, and continues to produce, men and women of extraordinary intelligence, brilliance and talent in all fields of human endeavor. Without question, in the field of modern African Literature, Nigeria has produced the best and greatest number of African writers of any African country, since the decade of the 1950s. It has produced the most acclaimed novelists, playwrights, essayists and literary critics.
Consequently, in both quantity and quality, Nigerian writers are unsurpassed anywhere on the African continent; and compete effectively against the best and the brightest anywhere in the world! In the specific area of literary criticism, Professor Abiola Irele stood head over shoulders above his contemporaries in Africa and around the world; which is why I dubbed him: a Master Quill; the quill being the medieval English word for the pen.
Professor Irele began his intellectual sojourn within the literary canon known as Négritude, first theorized by the founder-president of modern Senegal, Léopold Sédar Senghor. In a maiden article of his, Professor Irele posed the question as the title to his piece: “What is Négritude?” It was published in Tejumola Olaniyan and Ato Quayson’s African Literature: An Anthology of Criticism and Theory. In that piece, Professor Irele defined Négritude as: “the literary and ideological movement of French-speaking black intellectuals, which took form as a distinctive and significant aspect of the comprehensive reaction of the black man to the colonial situation.” Additionally, in his collection of essays, titled: “Négritude et condition africaine, Professor Irele “explores the question of African thought. He begins by rejecting the notion of ideological difference between Anglophone and francophone Africa. He aims to root African progress in the present and not in a romanticized past.”
Author of many books, journal articles, think pieces, public seminars and lectures; Professor Abiola Irele was a prolific writer, copious literary critic, intellectual and teacher. He was one the most accomplished architects as well as bricklayers of the foundation of modern African literary criticism, as a bona fide academic field in its own right. A few examples of his profound body of works, include but are not limited to the following: The African Experience in Literature and Ideology (1990); The African Imagination: Literature in Africa and the Black Diaspora (2001); “Négritude: Literature and Ideology,” published in The African Philosopher Reader (pp. 38-62), edited by P.H. Coetzee and A.P.J. Roux, Routledge (1988 and 2003); and Co-Editor, The Cambridge History of African and Caribbean Literature (2004). In 2013, Professor Abiola Irele was one of three accomplished Nigerians nationwide, awarded the Nigerian National Merit Award (NNOM). It was noted by the then President of Nigeria, Goodluck Jonathan, who was the conferrer of the award on that year’s recipients; that since the award was established thirty-four year ago, only seventy Nigerians have been so honored.
My personal relationship and later, friendship with Professor Irele, began when he joined the faculty of the Ohio State University (OSU) in 1989. I had been teaching at a private liberal arts university in Delaware, Ohio called: Ohio Wesleyan University, since 1986. Prof Irele
I was also an adjunct lecturer in the Department of African American and African Studies at OSU as well as pursuing a doctoral degree in Political Science at OSU. Professor Irele was already a well-known senior professor in African Literature and Romance Languages. He struck me as urbane and self-assured, like one with an obliging attitude of “been there, done that.” In fact, I had occasion once to give him a ride from OSU to his temporary residence, before his wife and children joined him and they bought a house in Columbus, Ohio. I found him to be a highly educated, cosmopolitan and erudite academic.
One day, just before the commencement of the summer break, I stopped by his office at OSU and gingerly informed him that I was putting finishing touches on the manuscript of my first novel, Black Mustard Seed (2002), and that I would be very appreciative if he reviews the work; and if he finds it worthy, provide a blurb for the back cover of the work in book form. In fact, my strategy at the time, being a first time author, was to get the endorsement of two “big guns” in African Literature: a well-known and respected novelist, for which I targeted the late great Professor Chinua Achebe; and a well-known African literary critic, for which I targeted the great, but sadly now, late Professor Abiola Irele. In retrospect, I count myself especially lucky and privileged to have gotten both their unqualified endorsements.
However, at the time, Professor Irele, replied to my request that he would be willing to read the work, but was making no promises as to whether or not he will provide a blurb for the back cover. That, he said, would depend entirely on the quality of the manuscript. If he thinks it is up to snuff, he will gladly provide such a blurb; if he does not, he will return the manuscript to me with his private comments and a fair well. I appreciated his forthright manner, no beating about the bush, no false promises or as Americans would say, no “dicking” around.
I thanked him profusely and left his office. A month later, I had the manuscript ready for Professor Irele’s review. And the summer break had just started, so he had a bit of time away from the heavy demands of teaching, endless committee meetings and penmanship, to pay some attention to the manuscript of this precocious upstart! A month later, I found the manuscript in my department mailbox, in the same large brown manila envelope in which I had sent it to him. In such situations, no matter how self-confident one may be, your heart will skip a beat or two. Although my telephone number and email were in the cover note I sent the manuscript with to him, he did not call me or send me an email, he simply put the manuscript in my department mailbox.
I must admit, I postponed opening the envelope containing my manuscript, until I finished everything I had to do for the day, including dinner; then, I picked up the package and pried open its still sticky flap. Professor Irele’s blurb was preceded by a simple: “Congratulations!” Then, he appended his blurb: “This remarkable novel has several layers of narrative and meaning. It offers a sustained reflection, mediated by the narrative, upon the ambiguous political climate in which we are being called upon, as Africans, to come to terms with modernity.” A few months following the publication of the book in 2002, by Fourth Dimension Publishers, Enugu; the book was nominated for the Commonwealth Writers Prize.
After he returned to Nigeria, and took up the position of Provost of Kwara State University, I lost touch with him for a couple of years. However, about two months ago, he sent me an email, once again, congratulating me on the new book he heard I had just published, and which was launched a few weeks earlier, at the Nigerian Embassy in the United States in Washington DC; titled: A Tale of Two Giants: Chinua Achebe & Wole Soyinka (2016); requesting that I send him a copy of the book. He also told me that he will have the book reviewed in the literary journal they have at Kwara State University. Of course, I immediately mailed him a copy of the book along with my latest novel, Aftermath, which is a sequel to my earlier novel, Ejima. Shortly thereafter, he confirmed receipt of the two novels.
I was delighted he got a chance to see, and perhaps, read the latest works of a young man he encouraged his literary effort about fifteen years ago, trying to keep the flag flying! Nigeria, Africa and the world, has lost yet another giant in the arts of philosophical inquiry and letters. I hope his wonderful wife and children, take solace in the fact that their father lived a good life and made a permanent imprint on African Literature and elocution. May his soul rest in perfect peace.
