BAKAYOKO AT 60: HURRAH TO IGILANGO GEESI!

WEST AFRICA REVIEW

ISSN: 1525-4488

Issue 11 (2007)

Dele Layiwola

I shall like to begin my tributes to the trade unionist and academic, Biodun Jeyifo by appreciating the fact that the values of a society often begin and end with her elite corps in whatever way they may flower or variegate whether in industry, in public service or in the academy. This, I believe, is the sense in which the scholar and neuro-pathologist, Frantz Fanon meant it when he remarked that every generation, out of relative obscurity, seeks out its own relevance by either fulfilling it or betraying it. One of the compelling symbols of a generation or an age therefore tends to reside in the outlook or appearance of her denizens and those who reveal the courage to act it out and profess it. Many a time this might miscarry into a symptom rather than a phenomenon but they often do arrive at success as in the second generation of literary critics and writers that appeared a decade and a half after Nigeria’s political independence as a colony of Great Britain. Generally, they all tended to be born about the time of Nigeria’s writing of constitutions and coming of age and the period of the Second World War. I specifically refer to the period between 1940 and 1948. They thus appeared with a certain compelling characteristic, a reflexive tendency of character and a penchant for a critical reinvigoration of the age preceding them. Amos Tutuola’s The Palm wine Drinkard appeared in 1952 whilst Achebe’s Things Fall Apart followed in 1958. Ene Henshaw and Soyinka soon blazed the trail of other indigenous literary dramatists from about 1959. These were the formative years of the Jeyifo generation as the PanAfricanists were warming up for the postcolonial redefinition of the political and cultural terrain. These were the schoolboy days of the generation in question.

Jeyifo was born in the heartland of Ibadan by an Igarra father and an Ife mother resident at Oke Bola, but whose haunts spans Olorisha Oko and Oke Seni where he first witnessed the indigenous dye pits and Egungun festivals. And, of course, farther afield to the areas of commerce in Gbagi and Dugbe. Obafemi Awolowo’s house was a stone’s throw from his father’s and of course the Ibadan Boy’s High School where he had his secondary education and first cut his teeth on a ‘bitter unionist berry’. More about this in a later publication.

I only met Bakayoko[as I have chosen to name him, after Sembene Ousmane’s fictional character of a similar build and temperament] after he returned from Cornell in 1976, or thereabout, though I might have seen him on the arts theatre stage a decade earlier. He was wiry and long, and perhaps still retains his gaunt looks, ever fond of wearing superannuated bifocals. I sometimes wonder whether he wasn’t Soyinka’s model for the figure of Professor in The Road. His physiognomy was prominent, hawk-like and penetrating and he had the uncanny ornithological habit of endlessly pecking at the critical [re]sources of knowledge. He wasn’t quite bald but had an uneven outcropping of hair. With this outlook, he commands attention from even the most casual observer. I ran into him at one of the productions in the arts theatre after which he would make provocative comments and proffer radical insights even if unsolicited. He was among the best of the brightest and the brightest of the best, and ever pleasantly cantankerous. I later found out that he is to be a sober and pleasant character who banters and loves inquisitive companies of both the young and the elderly. How pleasant it was to discover his abode on Amina way along the rocky paths I had occasionally taken home from Abadina school a decade or so before. I met also his pleasant African American spouse, Sheila Walker. They both had prominent, shiny eyes, conspicuous from their sockets as some intelligent persons are lucky to have them.

BJ would always keep appointments and his selected loyalties and has no chips on his shoulders. You knew where he stood on matters of principle and he always had the rearguard cerebral power to articulate and uphold his points of view. Disappointingly, he is an atheist or at the very best, an agnostic; but I think the former is nearer the truth. It is not clear whether this is a materialist outcropping of emergent Marxian derivation or whether it is the existentialist cynicism arising from profound and encircling book-learning. If he were otherwise, certain things in his life and nature would, decidedly, be different and he wouldn’t be the BJ we have hitherto identified.

The most conspicuous side of BJ has always been the polemical, the bright and dashing academic, author and critic. But he can also be really quiet and reflective as some of his students can testify. Without being sullen he would withdraw into his shell and cry if or when nature calls for it. One such occasion was after the sudden and unexpected death of his mother, Morounranti Aduke. The other was after his recovery from an illness that almost took his life. But he has always been as consistent as he has been human. He rises and dips and expresses his God-given talents at will testifying to the fact that we can express the best each time an opportunity comes knocking. He loves words and the sound of their expressions and, through them, emerges the very best among his ilk.

Congratulations, Dear Bakayoko, for coming of age, but the journey is yet far from accomplishment. A thousand moons are yet to shine. Igba odun, odun kan…Ogun odun loni, ogbon odun loni, ogota odun loni, ogorun odun loni, bayi la maa ri ara wa t’owo t’omo t’alaafia l’agbala owuro. . . . Continue to blossom like the growing frond. Ire ooo.

Citation Format:

Dele Layiwola. “Bakayoko At 60: Hurrah To Igilango Geesi!” West Africa Review: Issue 11, 2007.