WEST AFRICA REVIEW ISSN: 1525-4488 Issue 9 (2006)

Ogaga Ifowodo

Sometime in 1987, not longafter Dr Festus Iyayi, together with three other colleagues, had beendismissed from the University of Benin (Uniben) as punishment by theBabangida military regime for his social commitment and vibrantleadership of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), Ijoined him and two other comrades on a solidarity-building visit toObafemi Awolowo University in Ife. It still bore its old name ofUniversity of Ife then. Chief Awolowo, for whom the university wouldsoon be renamed, had recently joined the ancestors and a poem I wroteto commemorate my feelings, indistinct to me now, had made it toprint in The African Guardian, due mostly to the benevolentview Okey Ndibe, the magazine’s editor, had of it. It was mysecond year at Uniben, where I was a law student with all his heartand half his head in literature. Before setting out, I had shown thepoem to Iyayi who after very encouraging words said, “You haveto meet BJ.” I already knew the famous nickname from the circlein which I had begun to mingle ever since I was introduced to OdiaOfeimun two years earlier. Besides, BJ’s was one of the mostrecognisable names in the lively discourseon Nigerian literatures that had then found a bridge from theuniversities to the public arena through the justly celebrated butshort-lived Guardian Literary Series of The Guardian ofLagos; a weekly feast for the Nigerian literati, especially for usaspiring writers.

The visit to Ife was a follow-up to the attendanceby Professor Toye Olorode and Drs Dipo Fasina and Idowu Awopetu onbehalf of the Ife chapter of ASUU at the first hearing in the suitfiled by Iyayi and the three others at the High Court in Benin. I hadbeen struck speechless by the disarming simplicity of the trio, inparticular by Olorode who upon being introduced to him by Iyayipractically bowed while extending his hand right to my hip for ahandshake! I remember still his sandals hewn out of a discarded cartyre, which merely completed his unassuming attire. Iyayi had askedabout BJ and his apologies were given, but I couldn’t helpwondering then if BJ cut a similar Spartan figure.

Although our visit to Ife wasfreighted with the urgent task of mobilising for the reinstatement ofthe four dismissed lecturers, for me it was also a personalpilgrimage to a font of learning. Everyone I looked up to in theliterary society into which I sought to be inducted spoke glowinglyof him. There was so much I felt I could learn from him, even just bybeing close enough to him to touch, as it were, a hem of histrousers. I was secretary-general of the Students Union in myuniversity and a budding writer; BJ was a scholar activist, pastpresident of ASUU and one of our most reveredliterary critics. He exemplified what I would later know as theGramscian ideal of the organic intellectual. And from the little Ihad read of his work, he favoured the literature of vigorousengagement with the peculiarly troubling realities of our(post-colonial) existence as a nation-in-the-making, an aestheticvision I held to my embryonic literary ambition. And I was dying toknow what he would think of my Awolowo poem.

Things got going rather quickly once we arrived,peaking with a near spontaneous rally at the amphitheatre. Ife, withits vaunted reputation as a hotbed of radicalism, seemed intent onproving well deserving of it. The quickfire rapidity with whichstudents and staff gathered made it look as if the entire campus hadbeen waiting all day for our arrival.

“Iya-yi, Iyayiiii,” Yinka Odumakin,public relations officer of the Ife Students Union, sang.

“Aai-Aai-Ooooh,” the thousands ofvoices inside and outside the amphitheatre thundered in response.

“Baban-gida, Baban-gida,” Odumakin led on.

“Boo, boo, boooooo,” the crowdreturned, loud enough for the reigning military strongman to hear athis Dodan Barracks seat of power in Lagos.

Then Odumakin called each of the sacked lecturersinto the song, and every member of our delegation, never failing toextract a hearty response. By the time he switched to the moreemotional pidgin improvisation, “When I remember Iyayi, waterrun mi eyes O,” whose response was a throaty-low repetition ofthe line, Ife was ready for battle and the reinstatement of thecomrades seemed a morning away. For the night, however, we did battlewith speeches, General Babangida and “his errand girl”—thevice-chancellor of Uniben—not failing to get their dueexcoriation. Then there were resolutions on how to ensure that theplanned eradication of university autonomy and general assault oneducation, all in slavish obedience to the IMF and World Bank, didnot succeed. After a few more fervent speeches and songs, the throngof students, staff and sympathisers dispersed.

It was already dark by now and the staff clubseemed the obvious place to go let off steam. As a rookie radicalstill cutting his teeth, I spoke very little, preferring to listenand learn as much as I could. Already I counted it an immensebenediction to be keeping such company. I can’t now recallmeeting BJ at the rally, or even at the staff club. It seems thematter that prevented him from coming to the court hearing retainedstill a hold on his attention. What I do remember vividly, however,was my being taken to his campus house the next morning by acolleague from the Ife students union. At last I was going to meetBJ! I remember that he seemed in a hurry and was rather brusque uponbeing informed that I had asked to be brought to meet him.

“My friend, what is it? I’m afraid ambusy, so you must state your business quickly.”

I must have been truly slow, out of a combinationof awe and a sudden feeling of having imposed on his precious time.At the time he bade me to state my business, my attention had beenheld by the sheer ubiquity of books in his living room. Books, bookseverywhere, even in that seemingly sacred high shelf on every wall tobe found in nearly all middle class homes and dedicated to framedphotographs. I regained my wits, and just as his impatience was aboutto turn on my colleague, I introduced myself. As it happened, I hadalso been recently featured in The Guardian’s “Poet ofthe Week” column edited by Ofeimun. Regrettably, I did not havewith me the two featured poems, my best claim to poetic fame in theworld.

“Do you have any of your poems with you?”

“Yes. I just had a poem published in The African Guardian.”

He read it, and before he wouldvouchsafe any opinion found something not quite certain to him aboutmy use of the word “genial.” Thanks to what followed,that word is about the only thing in the poem that I can now bring tomind since I did not find it worthy of being collected when I puttogether the manuscript that would later win the 1993 Association ofNigerian Authors prize and be published as Homeland & OtherPoems in 1998. I have, in fact, lost it, or I should say, beenmore than willing to let it slide into oblivion. BJ promptly reachedfor a dictionary, perhaps a thesaurus. I was yet to see a thesaurusthen, let alone use one, so the book he picked up seemed to me theonly thing of the kind I knew: a worterbuch, or literally,“wordbook,” to use a malleable German name fordictionary. As he searched for the word, he asked me what it meant.It was a test of my verbal agility, having announced myself as awould-be poet. I can’t say that I gave any satisfactory answerbeyond a diffident assertion that I knew there was such a word, butright then I learned a vital lesson: every word matters the wholeworld to the writer, especially one that would be a poet. And a gooddictionary must always be ready to hand as an indispensable aid inthe tracing not only of a word’s denotation, but also itsconnotations, declensions, etymology, and historical usages. If BJ,the famed scholar, critic and activist to whom I had come to payhomage, would not take my usage of a word at my own word, and wouldpromptly consult a dictionary, I couldn’t believe how cavalierI had often been to infer the meaning of unfamiliar words. I resolvedthen to always have a dictionary within reach, and today, it is aconstant on my bedside locker.

He found the word, and without giving awayanything as to how I might have abused it in my poem, gave anopinion. “Well, promising, but you mustn’t think you havearrived! It is a long, long road to being a poet and you must beprepared to work hard at it.”

I indicated my readiness totake that road, to prepare for any obstacle I might find on it. Thenhe wished to know if I had any more poems that might be publishable.“You could try sending a few to Ben Okri who I believe editsthe poetry section of West Africa. But remember, you haven’tarrived; don’t get carried away because you have appeared inThe Guardian and The African Guardian.”

He was going to his office in one of the Facultyof Arts buildings, very close to the amphitheatre. My colleague and Igot into his VW “people’s car” beetle. He neededsome material urgently and seemed entirely preoccupied by the searchfor it. I expressed my pleasure in meeting him, thanked him for histime and advice, and took my leave.

That was 1987. The following year, BJ left Nigeriafor the US in what he would, not long after, self-consciously referto as “one year in the first instance”—theself-comforting fiction of joining the brain-drain flight with thesolemn promise not to tarry abroad for longer than three years. Iwould see him again later that same year when he came for theinternational symposium in Lagos held supposedly to assess theimpact, a mere two years after, of the Nobel Prize on Africanliteratures, but which, in my view, was just an excuse to celebrateSoyinka and the epochal fact of a black person winning the covetedprize for the first time. If memory serves me well, it was then heinvited me for a drink together with Kayode “KK” Komolafeand, I believe, Dapo Adeniyi, two other younger but longer acquaintedcomrades of his. I would lose contact with him until nearly a decadelater.

I had decided to resolve thequestion of which, between law and literature, would be my vocationin 1996. I would be 30 then, and have been working with the CivilLiberties Organisation, Nigeria’s premier human rights NGO, forfour years. I was either going to have to give up the foolish dreamof being a writer—and a poet at that!—and try to make acareer of being a lawyer, or find a more realistic way of being thekind of writer I wished to be. It was clear to me that I couldn’tamount to much either way if I did not sacrifice one for the other.Law and writing seemed like two deities to me, and I didn’tthink I could be a loyal devotee of both. No two professions madetruer the adage about pursuing two animals and catching none. I hadlong nourished the idea of going back to school to take a degree inliterature-in-english, but still quite unable to resolve theconflict, I left it to fate. I would await a sign that said theuncertain road of a writer was one I could dare to take. That signcame with a four-month residency fellowship of the Heinrich BollHaus, Langenbroich, in Germany, confirmed by the manner it cameabout. A colleague at the CLO had learnt from the new Heinrich BollFoundation representative in Nigeria, wife of his best friend, that ayoung and politically-active writer stood the chance of a writingfellowship at the Boll Haus. He advised me to send some poems to her.I did and got the fellowship. What was more, my good friend, ObiNwakanma, who had participated in the 26^th PoetryRotterdam Poetry Festival, had suggested that I apply for the nextone. With Soyinka putting in a kind word for me—as I wouldlater learn from the festival’s soon-to-retire director, MartinMooij—I was, in addition, going to be sharing podium withrenowned poets from all over the world. It had to be the sign! At thethe 27^th festival in June 1996, I would be mingling withthe recently crowned Nobel laureate, Seamus Heaney, in a galaxy thatincluded Miroslav Holub, Sharon Olds, our own Niyi Osundare, RitaDove, and James Fenton. I had arrived Germany in May and taken thetrain to Rotterdam, but once back in Langenbroich, I decided I’dride the good omen a little more by commencing the process of gettingback to school. I wrote to BJ, wondering if he had any advice for me.I wasn’t sure if I would get a response.

Since that 1998 day in Lagos, I had e-mailed himat least twice and received no reply. I was therefore thrilled to geta prompt handwritten letter from him. And that was when I knew thathe had just emerged from a very serious illness. Femi Osofisan hadmentioned in passing to me at a point that BJ was ill when Icomplained about not hearing from him, but there had been nothing inhis tone to suggest the critical condition that BJ now informed me hehad mercifully overcome. I felt sheepish reading his apology for notanswering my communications in that time, and humbled as he declaredhis readiness to help me realize my ambition. He promised to do whathe could to get round the problem of my lack of a background inEnglish literary studies which I had mentioned in my letter. Iapplied to Cornell, with BJ’s encouragement but I should reportthat my application failed and not for any fault of his. I simply didnot know enough about the US college admission process then to standa chance.

In 2000, I made one moreabortive attempt to gladden my heart but was unlucky again. Oncemore, an inadequate knowledge of the intricacies of the Americanuniversity admission process proved my undoing. I had made progress,though, as the only obstacle to my making it to the Ohio StateUniversity was a delay in forwarding my GRE and TOEFL scores, whileVermont College not only offered me admission but was ready to giveme a tuition award. But that disappointment the second time in a rowproved a blessing. In 2000, I was sponsored to the Iowa WritingProgramme by the former United StatesInformation Service in Nigeria. The fellowship came with a small fundfor travel in the US. During the two weeks set aside for it, I choseto visit at least two of the schools I was going to try again for theelusive admission, and to attend the 70^th birthdaycelebration of Chinua Achebe at Bard College. I had visited Columbia,where Michael Scammel, chair at the time of PEN USA to whom I hadwhispered my intentions in Warsaw at the 1999 International PENconvention, had arranged for me to meet a poetry faculty member thereand sit-in in her class. From Annandale-on-Hudson, I left for Ithaca,but somehow had failed to inform BJ of my precise arrival time. Myold friend, Akin Adesokan, had been luckier than me in 2000 and wasalready at Cornell, but I had been as careless in apprising him of myitinerary. I was, however, generally expected by both of them.

On arrival in Ithaca, I took a taxi to GoldwinSmith Hall, the only address I had for Akin and BJ. A damp and greysky slouched over Ithaca, something I would later learn was a featureof the town rivaled only by its bitter winters. I got up the thirdfloor and walked down the long hallway of Goldwin Smith Hall, alreadyapprehensive that I might be in for a long night. I found BJ’sdoor, distinguished by a blue plastic name plate that seemed bothfamiliar and odd to me; no doubt a keepsake from Ife, something ofhis native soil in a pouch. I knocked. No answer. I knocked again,this time as a prayer rather than with any real hope of an answer.Well, I had done it. I had nowhere to go, and commenced to bemoan mycarelessness. There was nothing I could do but hope that Akin or BJwould materialize out of the dampness of the night. Or that I mightjust get lucky with the first two or three persons I accosted withthe question, “Do you know where I might find Professor BiodunJeyifo, BJ for short, or a Nigerian grad student called AkinAdesokan?”

But I was in for a reprieve from an ill plannednight. As I walked downcast down the hall, not knowing what to donext except perhaps hang around the south entrance to Goldwin SmithHall, I saw a lanky figure, hands in trouser pockets, coming towardsme in a sort of boyish strut. I did not recognize him until he wasquite close to me. Although I had not seen him in thirteen years andwas not exactly sure how much his looks would have changed, I shouldhave known then to blame my gradually declining eyesight. But myvision cleared in the nick of time.

“Prof!” I called out.

He wasted no time in digging into me.

“Ogaga, I must say that this is ratherirresponsible. Surely, you could have called to let me know when youwould arrive?”

I attempted a hopeless excuse along the lines ofmy not being able to call him.

“Really? You are not in the post-colony, Ihope you know that. You couldn’t find a phone? Anyway, you area lucky man. I was coming for an entirely different purpose, so youshould thank your stars.”

I did. And tried to lighten the mood.

“Prof., I almost didn’t recognizeyou.”

“What, is your sight already failing?”

“Oh, no, just that you looked so boyish youcould easily be mistaken for a graduate student,” I said.

“Well, then, it’s clear you need to dosomething about your eyes!” he said.

But the mood had lightened and in a moment herenewed his readiness to support my latest bid to enter the academy.He was now, he said, in a better position to help my application. Iwould be applying for the Master in Fine Art in poetry, as a steppingstone to the Ph.D in English two years after. With a background inlaw, but two poetry books under my belt, it was my stronger footforward. I was now putting the horse in front of the cart and he hadevery confidence it would be the third time lucky. He would write arecommendation for me to Cornell and the three other colleges I wasapplying to—Columbia, NYU and the University of Iowa. Thesingle most important requirement, other than my transcript, he said,was the statement of purpose. I had written one for my application toIowa which I thought it was best to send in before heading for theeast coast. I showed it to him. He liked it, thought it saideverything I needed to say and in the right tone, but could bebetter.

I was no stranger to BJ’sexacting standards and I had no objection to being driven toperfection. He promised to take a look at it. It is just possiblethat I failed to get an offer from Iowa due entirely to the earlierversion of the statement I had submitted,given that I did quite well with the three applications supported bythe copy with BJ’s input: Cornell and Columbia made firmoffers—with Columbia even doing the unusual by offering metuition—while NYU had me on the waitlist. With Cornell offeringa full scholarship, and with BJ and Akin there to give me a Nigeriancommunity, not to mention the pastoral bewitchment of Ithaca, it waseasy deciding where to go. Five years after, with an MFA in thekitty and half way into the Ph.D, I cannot think of the fulfillmentof my long-nourished desire to pursue a literary education withoutBJ’s instrumental role in it. Sixteen years after his sternadmonition, “you mustn’t think you have arrived” asa poet, I would try again to earn his unguarded praise. I arrived inIthaca with a commitment by Africa World Press to publish my secondcollection, Madiba. After revisiting the manuscript, I askedBJ if he would do a blurb for it. He would, but not without readingthe entire manuscript, even though he had seen about half of it inthe German-English selection from it and my debut released inStuttgart in 1999. I had waited sixteen years for it, doing my bestto “work hard” at being a poet as he had told me duringthat first encounter in 1997, but sweeter was the joy of it as theresult is the endorsement that graces the back of Madiba. Whenpaying the customary debts for The Oil Lamp, part of my MFAthesis, I hardly discharged the one to BJ when I said, “Immensegratitude to Biodun Jeyifo (BJ) whose support and encouragementdating back to 1987 when I published my first magazine poem, and atevery step of the way thirteen years later, smoothed my road toCornell, and also for his avuncular presence which made Ithaca morewelcoming than its famous winters had promised.”

Immense, inexpressible, gratitude, for the randomrecollections above, and for the inevitably unsaid. Did I mention,for instance, that I had at last the pleasure of sitting in his classand learning in the more conventional sense at his feet? Needless tosay, I learn even now from him in his capacity as chair of mydissertation committee. At 60, and at the height of his intellectualpowers, his humanity and ideological commitment to a just Nigeria anda more humane world as strong as ever, there is very little to wish aman as simple in his lifestyle as his famous moniker, BJ, but asintellectually sophisticated as his amazing range of work shows,other than what this Nigerian colloquailism offers: More grease tohis elbow! On a more serious note, I am convinced that ProfessorBiodun Jeyifo’s best work lies in front of him. Which is nocomment on the work behind him (Oh that my syntax should make me saythis!), only that the man is his own competition. Witness how hisstudy of Soyinka is gradually acquiring the status of the definitivework on our own W.S. I think here, for instance, of thework-in-progress he has announced in his essay, “In the Wake ofColonialism and Modernity.” And what greater testimony to theman’s quiet but extraordinary influence than the revelation bythat stalwart, Edwin Madunagu, that it was BJ who introduced him toMarxism! As I remarked in an e-mail to him upon Madunagu’sdisclosure, who would have thought that anyone introduced Madunagu toMarxism? Wasn’t he born with it? Or that BJ should own thatdistinction?

But there is, I guess, a wish I can make: that theancestors grant BJ health; that they continue to look after theirown. Ise! And with that wish granted, we can expect to be astonishedeven more in the years to come. Sixty cheers and more then to AbiodunJeyifous, better known as Biodun Jeyifo, and popularly as BJ.

Citation Format:

Ogagaoghene Emerotowho Ifowodo. “For BJ at 60: A Student’s RandomRecollections in Lieu of a Tribute,” West Africa Review: Issue 9, 2006.

Copyright © 2006 Africa Resource Center, Inc.