Biodun Jeyifo (1946 – 2026)
•Nigeria loses yet another intellectual giant and activist In Prof. Biodun Jeyifo, the intellectual, activist, and patriot merged in the pursuit of social justice. His life’s work demonstrated that intellectual
•Nigeria loses yet another intellectual giant and activist
In Prof. Biodun Jeyifo, the intellectual, activist, and patriot merged in the pursuit of social justice. His life’s work demonstrated that intellectual power, as he implied in an interview, must serve the struggle for “a country that will be free from oppression, looting, poverty, and insecurity of life.”
His passing on February 11, less than two months after his 80th birthday, further diminished the class of Nigerian cerebral combatants —those rare philosophers of progress who fought with the weapon of the mind.
Fittingly, the theme of the symposium celebrating his grand milestone birthday on January 5 captured his abiding concerns: “Pedagogy, Curriculum and Decolonisation: Then and Now.” Held at the MUSON Centre, Lagos, it was organised by the Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism in honour of the distinguished academic, critic, public intellectual, cultural theorist, and specialist in world Anglophone literature and culture.
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A world-class literary critic, he was regarded as a leading authority on the work of Wole Soyinka, Nigeria’s literary legend and 1986 Nobel Laureate. His seminal study, Wole Soyinka: Politics, Poetics, Postcolonialism (Cambridge University Press, 2004), was described as “arguably the most sophisticated analysis of any single author in African literature.” He won the Choice Outstanding Academic Titles (OAT) award of the American Library Association for the work.
This was preceded by his foundational work, The Yoruba Popular Travelling Theatre of Nigeria (1984), a definitive study of indigenous performance, and The Truthful Lie: Essays in the Sociology of African Drama (1985), which brilliantly explored the deep connections between art, class, and society.
Equally notable is his work on the illustrious Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe. Through a series of influential essays in the 1990s, he was credited with placing Achebe’s work, including ‘Things Fall Apart’, “in an ideological and theoretical perspective not previously considered by other critics.”
Jeyifo was born in Ibadan, and earned a first-class bachelor’s in English from the University of Ibadan in 1970, followed by a master’s from the same institution in 1973, and a doctorate from New York University in 1975. He also held a DLitt (honoris causa) from Obafemi Awolowo University—formerly the University of Ife—where he taught for several years. Reflecting on that period, he noted that it was at Ife he became “the kind of teacher and person I had always tried to become.”
His distinguished career further included senior professorships at Cornell University and Harvard University, in the United States; at Harvard, he ultimately served as Professor Emeritus of African and African American Studies and of Comparative Literature.
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The range of his scholarly and professional interests underscored 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; and twentieth-century revolutionary social philosophy and literature.
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Beyond his internationally recognised scholarship and contribution to learning, he demonstrated the vital meeting point between theory and praxis. Of particular note was his Marxism-inspired involvement in the formation of a commune in Southwest Nigeria in the 1970s.
Furthermore, as National President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) from 1980 to 1982, he emerged as a pivotal mobilising figure during an era of intensifying socio-political complications.
While the global influence of Marxism as a transformative ideology may have waned, it did not weaken his commitment to social reform; he remained a vocal critic of the disturbing manifestations of underdevelopment that continued to plague his home country.
His ideologically driven, pro-people activism was never muted. Parallel to his rich academic life, he was a consistent columnist for some of the country’s major newspapers, using his platform to champion the liberation of the Talakawa. His intentional employment of this Hausa term for the poor and downtrodden offered a profound insight into his objective struggle for social justice across Nigeria’s multi-cultural landscape.
He will be remembered for his indisputable intellectual depth and his principled demand for “a better life” for the people.
