By Tunde Olusunle
I had two spells as a student at the University of Ilorin, abbreviated by us as Unilorin. True, our university started as a college under the University of Ibadan, (UI). We were in a hurry, however, to assert our independence and define our own corporate identity, soon after we were weaned off our mother’s breasts. Unilorin has since imprinted itself in Nigerian and global consciousness.
The sheer quality of human resources it has availed the world,
its groundbreaking ventures in research, teaching and mentoring, the holistic
gamut of knowledge production and dissemination has since earned it a more
fitting appellation. We call it the Better By Far citadel. My primary excursion
through my alma mater ran from 1982 to 1985. The succeeding odyssey straddled 1987
to 1989. I studied English on both occasions, with a dominant slant for
literature which I explored for my long essays and thesis respectively.
Several years after my departure from Unilorin, the name “Pius Adesanmi” became recurring in the public and literary engagement circuits, in Nigeria and beyond. He was at once a poet, scholar, critic, satirist, columnist, author, maybe theorist as well. Biographical information about him, which I picked up in places, described him as a product of Unilorin and he was said to have studied French.
The English and French faculty subunits in my time were subsumed
under a single department, known as the Department of Modern European
Languages, MEL for short. Far into its teething years, the department was
steered by the respected English scholar, literary critic, editor, David Cook,
who helped to build the twin-arms of the department into formidable, global
reckoning. Cook earned a first class degree in English from the University of
London in 1954, and a master’s degree in 1956. He taught at the University of
Southampton before relocating to Africa in 1962.
On your next outing, you may encounter: Charles Bodunde; Taiwo
Oloruntoba-Oju and his wife, Omotayo Oloruntoba-Oju; Sola Babatunde; Gbenga
Ayeni; Tivlumun Nyitse; Sunnie Enessi Ododo; Wumi Raji; Sola Mike Olorunyomi;
Tunde Akanni; Rasheed Na’Allah, Bayo Afolabi, and several others. They are all
distinguished professors, or professorial-cadre eggheads serving in
universities and other institutions in Nigeria and elsewhere in the world. They
are all sterling products of the primordial MEL, Unilorin’s Department of
Modern European Languages of yore. Pius Adesanmi followed the footsteps of
these older and inspirational alumni of MEL, Unilorin.
Even while I was still foraging for information on Pius
Adesanmi, I would yet get to know that he was my “younger brother.” Within the
context of the family and community in many African cultures, English-style
labels such as cousin, aunt, uncle, nephew, niece, are alien and rarely deployed
in day-to-day interactions and conversations.
In the Yoruba country for example, every other male or man, is
as well your “Baba” or “Boda,” every female or woman your “Mama” or “Anti.”
“Egbon” also suffices in referring to an older person, not as old as one’s
parent, though, while “Aburo” is a younger relative or kinsmen. Adesanmi
actually hailed from the same hometown, Isanlu, headquarters of Yagba East
Local Government Area, (LGA), like me. His family house, a whispering distance
from ours. My family home is domiciled in Omowa Mopo district, while the
Adesanmis are in Itedo Ijowa, both in Isanlu. These were distances our people
walked as leisure before the advent of indulgent inventions.
I was born and raised out there in the old North Central and
Midwestern states. Adesanmi was sired and groomed at home in Isanlu. This,
however, did not detract from the genius he blossomed into. His father, Baba
Alfred Dare Adesanmi, was a diligent, respected and inspirational educationist
in contemporary Okun land in Kogi State. He taught and headed prominent schools
in the area including St. Kizito’s College, Isanlu, St. Augustine’s College,
Kabba and Titcombe College, Egbe.
With his equally committed wife, Mama Olufunke Lois Adesanmi,
they ensured their son got the best of education and mentoring, available
anywhere. Remarkably, the younger Adesanmi demonstrated early passion for
French studies even in these hitherto semi-urban destinations. He would go on
to obtain a first class degree honours in the course. And he did so at an
impressively young age of 20, in 1992! The differences in our generations
obviously privileged me to have gone through the university many years before
him.
Pius Adesanmi should have marked his 51st birthday on 27
February, 2023. It would also be four years after his very painful demise in a
plane crash involving “flight ET 302”, operated by Ethiopian Airlines, come
March 10, 2023. The tragic incident occurred in an Ethiopian suburb called
Bishoftu. Jemilat Nasiru in a tribute in his memory, March 12, 2019, notes
that: “If there is one name on the lips of many Nigerians, a name that weighs
down the tongue with peculiar grief, a name that warms the heart with humour
from memories past and pain of an unthinkable demise, a name that will only now
encounter its embodiment in dreams and the world yonder, that name will be Pius
Adebola Adesanmi.”
This is, therefore, a fitting opportunity to remember this meteor, who shot through and shone in the global firmament of creativity and intellection during his abridged sojourn on this side. As a poet, Adesanmi released his maiden, and sadly, only volume of poetry, The Wayfarer and Other Poems, in 2001.
The book won the
keenly contested Association of Nigerian Authors, (ANA) poetry prize, in the
same year. It has been described as “a literary response to the ambiguities of
oppressive power during military rule in Nigeria.” It is consistent with the
over-arching thematic focus of poets writing within that milieu, who attempted
“the mobilisation of poetic imagination in the resistance of the dominant
military culture of the 1990s.”
Adesanmi released his collection of satirical essays, Naija No
Dey Carry Last: Thoughts on a Nation in Progress in 2015. Despite his place in
diaspora in a career which privileged him an American green-card holder and
Canadian citizenship, simultaneously, Adesanmi’s umbilical interconnectivity to
his homeland and to Africa was never in doubt. The book is an overflow of the
author’s vocation in public intellection. It is an aggregation of witty
perspectives by the author about different sides and slides of Nigeria’s
day-to-day experiences, even conversations.
Udo Okoronkwo-Chukwu in a 2016 study suggests that the book
deploys “satire to create political awareness and national memory… and
scrutinises the growth of Nigeria’s democracy and the commitment of successive
leaders.” The book was listed by Channels Television Book Club’s prestigious
list of the Best 15 Nigerian Books of 2015.
His very seminal book, You’re Not A Country, Africa: A Personal
History Of The African Present, (2011), is a ground-breaking collection
of essays. Adesanmi attempts to interrogate what it really is, that Africa
means to him as an African. By extension, it equally tries to distil the
perspectives of other Africans about their continent. An immensely prolific
writer, he also authored Who Owns the Problem? Africa and the
Struggle for Agency, posthumously released in 2020, as well as Africa Matters:
Cultural Politics, Political Economies and Grammars of Protest, (2019),
co-edited by Blair Rutherford, among others.
Adesanmi obtained a master’s degree in French at UI in 1998. He
had engaged with some of Nigeria’s most revered scholars and literary creators,
notably Olu Obafemi, Emeritus Professor of English in Unilorin. UI will further
expose him to literary icons like Wole Soyinka, Femi Osofisan and Niyi
Osundare. He pursued a doctorate in French Studies from the University of
British Colombia, graduating in 2002.
He was between 2002 and 2005, assistant professor of Comparative
Literature at the Pennsylvania State University in the United States of
America, (USA). He was engaged by the Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada in
2006, as Professor of Literature and African Studies. A prodigious global
brand, Adesanmi harvested strings of honours and awards in his impactful
career. He won the inaugural Penguin Prize for African Writing in the fiction
category for his landmark work, You’re Not a Country, Africa. He
also won the 2017 edition of the Canada Bureau of International Education
Leadership Award.
Pius Adesanmi is survived by his aged mother, Mama Olufunke Lois
Adesanmi, his wife, Muyiwa and two young daughters, Oluwatise and
Oluwadamilare. Back home in Isanlu and the broader Yagba sub-country, Adesanmi
continues to be missed. Tayo Akanbi, an engineer and civil servant, one of
Adesanmi’s childhood friends, recalls with nostalgia that Adesanmi was in the
process of having his own address in Isanlu, by way of building a small house
in the community.
Ralph Omololu-Agbana, journalist and Adesanmi’s classmate at
Titcombe College, Egbe, recalls his late friend’s consternation at the
weaponisation of the 2019 elections, when they chatted before his departure.
Agbana recalls Adesanmi saying in Yagba: “This is unbelievable. You mean arms
were brought into our pristine oasis of peace and serenity in Yagbaland? This
is ominous and totally out of our DNA.”
Nduka Otiono, also a Nigerian-Canadian like Adesanmi, who is
associate professor at the Carleton University, collaborated with Uchechukwu
Umezurike, to produce a memorial poetry collection in honour of Adesanmi.
Titled Wreaths for a Wayfarer, a pun on Adesanmi’s first and only
poetry volume, the book was published in 2020. I have equally paid tribute to
his memory in my newest volume of poetry, A Medley Of Echoes, (published in
2022), in a poem titled “A bouquet for
Bola.”
Bola is abbreviated from Adesanmi’s middle name, Adebola, which
he rarely used. We all continue to savour the “cologne” memories of a brother
and kindred spirit who was on this side, albeit for brief. One who nonetheless
engraved his name indelibly on the sands of time.
*Dr
Olusunle, poet and author, is a member of the Nigerian Guild of Editors
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