By Henry Agbebire
The news filtered in on the 5th of June, 2023 that the erudite Professor of English and Literature, Tony Afejuku, has mandatorily disengaged from the University of Benin after over four decades of university lecturing. The following article was published in his honour eight years ago in The Guardian to speak of his exemplary virtues as a worthy teacher. I believe it is still a fitting eulogy for a man who committed his entire vibrant life to scholarship…
Whenever I ponder the sordid state of our university education in Nigeria today, and the persistent outcry of many employers over the perennial crisis of unproductive university graduates, I remember Tony Afejuku, the distinguished Professor of English and Literature at the University of Benin. Great teachers are rare, but Afejuku stands out as an Icon to me. His style was greatly criticised by different categories of students. Some students felt the standard he required was too high.
Many
others felt he was unapproachable and was impatient with average students; and
many more merely concluded that he was a sadist who wished no one well. But I
must admit without any iota of nervousness that I owe much of the sound
education I received from the University of Benin to him. Some of us, however,
who braced up and worked spiritedly to gratify Professor Afejuku’s academic
expectations, feel that he deserves the thanks and praise of men.
Today, many corporate organisations are wary of being forced to
employ half-baked graduates, because not too many graduates possess the
confident traits and intellectual prowess of a well groomed product from the
university. Many students desperately want to acquire university degrees, but
don’t want to study very hard. As we churn out thousands of graduates each
year, only a few satisfy the average requirement for corporate employment.
Could it be that our lecturers fall short of the required minimum standard in
the university or that many university students have become hopelessly mediocre
in pursuance of their academic goals?
If
other lecturers would fail to maintain or raise the required standard in the
university, Afejuku is one man that will not associate with mediocrity, and
until the day of his last breath I know he will not compromise high academic
standards. I shall speak about him as an example of the kind of Professors we
need to instil discipline, hard work and the culture of assiduous reading
amongst undergraduates in Nigeria today. I shall also speak about how, as my
teacher and mentor, he influenced my capacity for writing, enhanced my
unquenchable taste for excellence in academic pursuit, and helped in the total
formation of my strength and character as a trainer and writer.
First, I wish to congratulate Afejuku, by birth of the Warri Royal Family, for his recent award as a fellow of the Literary Society of Nigeria (LSN). It is an honour well deserved. In my years as student at the University of Benin, 1989/1993 set (although we left the university in March 1994 as a result of incessant students’ unrest during that period), Afejuku was not a mere lecturer.
He was not one of those lecturers who were simply bothered about
transferring knowledge and skills or facilitating lecture, he was a teacher
through and through – a passionate educator who regularly wore the creative
garb of the life coach. He would not only help you to discover your
unmistakable potential by setting for you standards supposedly higher than your
capacity, he would help you to move from where you are to where you ought to be
as long as you show good enough commitment to your academic goal.
For students that were willing to approach him and engage him on
challenging academic issues to further improve their lives, he was always
willing to help. He never adopted the soft and affectionate tone of a father
grovelling at an over-pampered child, a method many students may have
preferred; rather he would break into your heart and trigger the very pith of
your consciousness to seek excellence in your academic adventure. He never
minces his words whenever he urges you to raise your academic standard, even
though he is gracious and genial at heart.
Unfortunately, so many students could not really connect with the
genuinely soft and jocular nature of the Professor, and because they were
probably disenchanted by his demands for ‘extremely’ high standards, many of
them lost the benefit of the literary wisdom of the professor forever. I was
extremely careful and determined to suck off whatever knowledge resides within
my lecturers than judge their weaknesses. I recognised quite early that there
was a lot to learn from my lecturers, and the only way to achieve that goal was
to love them for whom they are, regardless of the seeming difficulties many of
us faced on campus then.
Afejuku held, and definitely still holds, the view that it was an aberration, as long as he was still a lecturer, to produce graduates from the Department of English and Literature at the University of Benin that were not roundly nurtured and cultivated to speak and write the English language exceedingly. For those who were infected with the Afejuku syndrome, they graduated smart and became masters of English and Literature.
But for others,
who scorned his genuine crusade for excellent academic pursuit and adopted
mediocre approach to academic studies, they failed his courses and blamed him unashamedly
for it. If any employer complains bitterly today about any employee, rest
assured that such an employee is not a genuine product of Professor Afejuku.
Afejuku accepted unequivocally that as young adults on campus, we
already had the independence of mind to know what was most relevant to excel in
university education; and from the very first day we were introduced to his
class in our first year, he was blunt and emphatic, stating the rules of the
game as we got introduced to Prose fiction in the English and Literature
department. ‘You ought to be an avid reader and an impeccable writer to excel
as a student of English and Literature,’ he would say. ‘You can only pass the
Prose Fiction course if you show evidence of good and immaculate usage of English,
and effective arrangement of materials,’ he would add.
There was something about the Afejuku’s model of teaching that is
inherently scarce in the teaching methodology adopted by many lecturers. He
made us realise that sound university education was not child’s play. He showed
no sympathy to weak and slothful students; every university students was simply
expected to work out his or her salvation. ‘You need to read again and again;
you will almost die, but you will not die,’ he would underscore repeatedly.
Afejuku is an enigma, and definitely an unbelievable man. In the
period of four years that I studied English and Literature at the University of
Benin, the ‘fear of Afejuku was the beginning of wisdom’ for every student who
took the ‘Introduction to Prose Fiction’ course in the Department of English
and Literature. The course was a compulsory elective course for law students;
and many other students in the humanities, including those from Theatre Arts
department, formed the myriads of students Afejuku taught in our days. His
constant admonition that we ought to read assiduously, improve our grammar and
vocabulary, and ultimately hone our writing styles spurred in many of us the
spirit of hard work – the type that is dying uncontrollably and making a mess
of the labour market for university graduates.
He showed traces of a man with the temper of a wasp, but he only
throws such tantrums when students show lack of seriousness. For those of us
who loved him, and laboured under him as true apprentices, we found him a very
jolly fellow, who laughs wholeheartedly with the vigour and gusto of a truly
happy man.
He is an avid reader and an impeccable proof-reader. He is a deep
thinker and an avowed researcher, who reads a minimum of seven newspapers every
day. He believes firmly that every student has the capacity to attain the
pinnacle of excellence in any academic pursuit if only he or she studies very
hard. He marked exam scripts with the care and caution of a neurosurgeon. Just
like the neurosurgeon is mindful of the thousands of delicate veins that form
the brain, Afejuku never allows an uncrossed ‘t’ or an un-dotted ‘i’ or a
misused ‘verb’ to escape his sharp eyes. This accounts for why many students
passed with low scores and many others failed his course – Introduction to
Prose Fiction.
He is a man ruled by his conscience. You will hardly get a 40%
score in any of the courses he taught when you deserve 39%. Conversely you will
never get a B, when you deserve an A. His forthrightness to his philosophy that
you should get only what you deserve irked many students who failed the courses
he took. Many pointed accusing fingers at him in our days on campus and
labelled him as the architect of their academic woes. He was once abducted by a
group of disgruntled students and Students’ Union leaders to face trial in a
kangaroo court that was hurriedly located at the June 12 building in the
University of Benin.
The
response he provided to his uncouth accusers, who requested to know why some
students failed his courses even after repeating an extra year, made him an
instant hero. He said, ‘Today, I am not on trial, but Nigeria is on trial. This
is the key to my office, and right in my office are scripts I have marked. I
challenge you all to get those scripts and present them for an external
examiner’s audit. If there is a student that failed, but ought to pass, I
surrender that my head be cut off.’ In the end Afejuku was vindicated.
Let me quickly add that Afejuku is a doer of the principles and
concepts he teaches. He doesn’t just ask students to write exceptionally well,
he is an exceptionally good writer. His versatility as a writer is enormously
evident in his newspaper column, In &
Out, published in the Nigerian Tribune. As I have noted in
one of my comments on his publications, his column is quite spicy, pungent and
unequivocal. And I have become so addicted to it not only for its blistering
and sizzling annotations nor for its fiery analyses, but predominantly for its
linguistic pleasantness, its prosaic congeniality, its poetic splendour, and
ultimately for its unblemished prophetic candour. I recommend In & Out to anyone who would like to
understand the mind of the enigma – Professor Tony Afejuku.
Let me close this commentary on Afejuku by saying that I recognise
that many students taught by Afejuku in the last thirty years may remain
unrepentantly ungrateful to him, but a few others may choose to be prudently
thankful. As for me, I stand honourably as a lone Ranger abundantly submissive
in gratitude to Afejuku for being ‘hard’ on me; for instilling in me the
discipline to work hard in my academic pursuit and in all of my corporate
assignments today; and for teaching me the basic and universal tricks for
efficient writing.
Not
only did his ‘hard’ and ‘unenviable’ style guided me to graduate top of my
class, it prepared me for the vigorous corporate assignments I handle today as
a writer (with seven published books and 11 others ready for publication), a
corporate trainer, a life coach, a widely sought-after ghost writer (with well
over 17 publications) and a thriving business consultant. With Afejuku’s master
stroke as well, I have learnt to remain diligent and upright in my dealings
with people.
We need ‘hard’ lecturers like Afejuku to inject greater discipline
and seriousness in university education, and ultimately save employers the
nightmare they all face in the labour market today.
*Agbebire is a prolific writer, author, corporate trainer and Media Relations consultant. He received literary training under Professor Tony Afejuku in the Department of English and Literature at the University of Benin, and graduated top of his class in the 1992/93 set.
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