As Isidore Okpewho passed on September 4, a flood of condolences surged across the land. For the readers of his novels, it was a time to look back with relish and appreciation for his gift as a raconteur. For those who were his students, moments of great knowledge flashed back from memory about how the man played the role of an exponent of literature. To those enamoured of traditional literature, they warmed to the man’s seminal moments over his deep well of knowledge about African folklore.
He read, he explained to audience and he drew from culture. But in the end, as he passed on at 74 in the United States, he left the world better than he met it. He was poet, scholar, folklorist, teacher, exponent of the African narrative and lover of myth.
Many remember him for his novels that probe the intersection of Nigerian culture and psychology in such works as The Victims, The Last Duty, Tides and Call Me By My Rightful name. When he was not unearthing the dynamics of the Nigerian family like polygamy in The Victims, he was looking incisively at the pathology of the civil war in The last Duty.
He wrote with a fidelity to the oral culture and explored the nuances of the indigenous voice in his oeuvre. On account of his works, he won the 1976 African Arts Prize for Literature. In 1993, he also won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, the Best Book Prize. He was also a Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters and recipient of the Nigerian National Merit Award.
He was also well regarded in the world of research and scholarship in the major institutes, hence he became fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Centre For Scholars in 1982, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 1982, Centre for Advanced Study in the Behavioural Sciences, The W.E.B Dubois Institute in 1990, the National Humanities Centre in 1997. In 2003, he won the Guggenheim fellowship.
An important part of his background was his erudition in the classics and Greek. He graduated in the first class degree in classics at the University of London. He also studied Greek with distinction. Although his degree was in the University of London, he was in the University College, Ibadan, an affiliate of the University of London. He proceeded to obtain his Ph.D in comparative literature at the University of Denver. Then he obtained a D.Lit in the humanities from the University of London.
He had a vast experience in teaching. He taught at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York from 1974 to 1976, the University of Ibadan from 1976 to 1990, Harvard University from 1990 to 1991, and Binghamton University where he was before his last breath.
But many in the ivory tower also respect him for some of the great work he accomplished in the area of non-fiction. He tapped from his knowledge in classics and Greek and drew from his African roots to enhance his stature as a professor and scholar of comparative literature. He wrote such books as The Epic in Africa, Myth in Africa, African Oral Literature, Once Upon a Kingdom.
Okpewho was one of a generation of scholars who spent a big part of their careers outside Nigeria, and expended great intellectual energies educating foreigners about our tradition of literature. This comes not out of a sense of self-hatred or contempt from their fatherland. They were forced out for a simple reason. The nation did not provide them the atmosphere to flourish. So, they fled their country in what is painfully called brain drain.
The situation has not changed today. In fact, it is worse, and our universities have dropped out of the top one thousand, while they teach sometimes in the top 10 in the world.
We shall continue to breed the Okpewhos abroad until we make our country fertile for ideas.