WSCIJ Honours Ex-ASUU President, Biodun Jeyifo at 80

Oluchi Chibuzor

The Wole Soyinka Center for Investigative Journalism, (WSCIJ), and past students of renowned scholar and Professor Emeritus at Cornell, Biodun Jeyifo, have expressed gratitude to the broadminded impact his life had had on their career and field of literature globally.

Speaking yesterday in Lagos at a symposium in honour of the ex-ASUU President, themed ‘Pedagogy, Curriculum and Decolonisation: Then and Now’, the Executive Director, WSCIJ, Motunrayo Alaka, said the event invites everyone to look backward with honesty, forward with responsibility, and inward with courage.

According to her, “We recognise his accomplishments as a scholar whose work has shaped how we read African literature, interrogate power, and understand culture and as a Professor Emeritus of English at Cornell University, and of Comparative Literature and African and African American Studies at Harvard University.

“His scholarship on the works of our Grand Patron, Professor Wole Soyinka, remains foundational, but perhaps even more enduring is his insistence that knowledge must always be questioned: who produces it, who benefits from it, and who is left out.

“This gathering is both a celebration and reflection. Professor Jeyifo’s work has never allowed us the comfort of easy answers. Instead, it has urged us to pay attention, to power, to language, to silence, and to the structures that define society.

“Professor Jeyifo reminds us that the work of truth, critique, service, humility, community building and ethical engagement is never finished. As we honour the great BJ at 80, we do so in active conversation with his ideas and the questions they continue to raise.”

On the part of the celebrant, Prof. Jeyifo questioned why the country’s life expectancy rate since 1975 has not improved significantly while also raising concerns about multidimensional poverty among the young demographic.

“I was extremely lucky that I belong to the generation of extraordinary men and women devoted to academic rigour. However, in 1975, which is the year I returned to the country after my postgraduate studies in the US, the Nigeria statistic for life expectancy at birth was roughly 45 percent.

“Few years later, it grew by only 10 percent to 54 percent. Can you imagine what it means that all of my generation is gone? I am very lucky to live to 80.

“The poverty statistic in Nigeria in 1975 was about 47 percent of the population. Now, it’s about 62 percent of multidimensional poverty. And the vast majority of them are young. Overwhelming under 20 of them in multidimensional poverty.”

Commending the ex-ASUU President, Femi Falana, described his tenure “as a period to be remembered in the history of Nigeria education where he brought about noble initiative that has remained today.”