From about a month ago, for the first time in my life, I became superstitious. I have not travelled for the past one month telling myself that I will not travel until I make it to 70,” Professor Biodun Jeyifo said at a colourful ceremony to mark the milestone at the Arts Theatre of the University of Ibadan (UI), Oyo State, on January 5. It was the kind of contradiction that would interest and perhaps excite an intellectual of his hue. It was fitting that the celebration began at UI, Jeyifo’s alma mater, where he earned B.A. English (First Class Honours) in 1970.
The superstition-related thought conflicted with Jeyifo’s well-known unapologetic materialist interpretation of life. The candour with which he expressed his anxiety on the occasion reflected his dialectical approach. The celebration appropriately continued on January 21 and 22 at the Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Ile-Ife, where Jeyifo said he became “the kind of teacher and person I had always tried to become.”
As National President, Academic Staff Union of Universities, Nigeria, from 1980 to 1982, Jeyifo was a mobilising figure in an era of increasing socio-political complications.
It is a testament to his stature as a scholar that since 2006 he has been Professor of African and African American Studies and of Comparative Literature at the distinguished Harvard University in the U.S. The range of his scholarly and professional interests demonstrate his purposeful pursuit of knowledge that can bring about social change: African and Caribbean ‘Anglophone’ literatures; theatrical theory and dramatic literature, Western and non-Western; comparative African and Afro-American critical thought; Marxist literary and cultural theory; colonial and postcolonial studies; twentieth-century revolutionary social philosophy and literature.
Impressively, Jeyifo has continued to show that there is a meeting point between theory and praxis. It is worth mentioning Jeyifo’s Marxism-inspired involvement in the formation of a commune in a community in Southwest Nigeria in the 1970s. It is noteworthy that the decline of Marxism as a socially reforming ideology has not weakened his commitment to social reform, especially in his country with all its disturbing manifestations of underdevelopment.
Jeyifo’s internationally recognised scholarship and contribution to learning were strikingly captured in a description of his work by Cornell University, U.S.A., where in 2008 he became Professor of English, Emeritus, after teaching at the institution for almost 20 years. The portrayal said: “Professor Jeyifo is a leading literary critic and cultural theorist who has attained great prominence in African intellectual circles for his analysis of modernity and its attendant social and cultural crises.”
Importantly, Jeyifo is rated as perhaps the leading critical authority on Wole Soyinka, Nigeria’s literary legend and winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature. His book, Wole Soyinka: Politics, Poetics, Postcolonialism (Cambridge University Press, 2004), has been described as “arguably the most sophisticated analysis of any single author in African literature”.
Also remarkable is Jeyifo’s work on the significant Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe. In a series of essays in the 1990s, Jeyifo “placed Achebe’s work, including Things Fall Apart, in an ideological and theoretical perspective not previously considered by other critics.”
His ideologically driven pro-people activism has never been muted. Apart from his rich academic life and work, he has been a consistent columnist for major newspapers in the country, using his space to carry on his fight for Talakawa liberation – his employment of the Hausa word that refers to the poor gives an eye-opening insight into Jeyifo’s objective struggle for social justice in the country’s multi-cultural context.
The most important message from him on his birthday was: ”The demand for a better life for our people is urgent and we must not simplify what it takes. Change will come to our country, lives will be better, poverty will reduce and we will truly have a united federal nation only if we pay attention to its complexity.” It was food for thought from a multifaceted personality.