Renowned poet, playwright, author and Professor of English and Dramatic Literature, Prof. Olu Obafemi has been chosen to be guest speaker at the public lecture/heroes' day of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) at the University of Jos (UNIJOS).
At the event scheduled for 10am this Friday March 22 2024 at Unity Hall, ASUU Secretariat in Naraguta Campus of UNIJOS, Obafemi would speak on the topic, "Government's Commitment Towards The Funding Of Public Universities In Nigeria: The Past, The Present and The Future."
Obafemi, former President, Nigerian Academy of Letters (2016-2018), is believed to have pioneered an experimental tool for revolutionary aesthetics in Africa, typifying the plays of second generation Nigerian and African dramatists.
His works has also influenced the interpretation of radical
drama among theatre scholars in West Africa in the 1980s and 90s.
Obafemi has also contributed to advancing the discourse on post-feminist aesthetics in Nigeria drama to the engagement in material perception of society.
A statement by the Convener of the event and Head,
Department of English in UNIJOS, Prof. Jeff Doki, said the Chief Host is the
institution's Vice Chancellor, Prof. Tanko Ishaya; Host is Dr. Jurbe Molwus,
ASUU chairman (UNIJOS Branch) but under the distinguished chairmanship of Prof.
Monday Mangvwat, former Vice Chancellor of the University.
Doki said apart from being a detribalized Nigerian, Olu Obafemi is a man who is very willing to tear down the veils behind which the truth is hidden.
He said, "In 2023, when he served as a member of the
Re-negotiating team between ASUU and the FGN, he asked the Federal Government
to tow the path of honor by finalizing the agreement it signed with ASUU in
order to bring peace and industrial harmony on university campuses in Nigeria.
"Again, last year during a convocation lecture at the
Federal University Lokoja, he decried a situation where the FGN allocates only
4 per cent of its total budget to the education sector and called on the FGN to
pay university staff their withheld salaries. He also told the FGN that the
dissolution of University Councils is clearly against the spirit and ethos of
university autonomy. This is an abundant testimony of the fact that Olu Obafemi
is a Comrade Professor.
"It is left to be said that Obafemi is a scholar with
an unquenchable commitment for the emancipation of the poor and a distaste for
the exploitation of one class by another especially in modern industrial
capitalism. Obafemi represents the black radical’s anti-imperialist voice and
tradition, he represents the black radical’s increasing commitment to justice,
freedom and human rights, he represents the black radical’s revolutionary
humanist political vision and theories of social change.
"In Obafemi could be found a combination of the
political activist, social organizer, cultural worker or what the Italian
critical theorist, Antonio Gramsci, grandly calls the ‘organic intellectual’.
He is one of the most clamorous advocates of a free society in which the truth
would be placed in the service of national liberation and the construction of a
social order that favors the mass urban workers and rural producers at the base
of the socio-economic pyramid in Nigeria."
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