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.
