BIODUN Jeyifo is one individual who could not be persuaded by ethnicity as he acculturised into Yoruba even when his parents were Edo having been born and grew up in Oke Bola, Ibadan and there he lived all his life.
All his schoolings from the primary high school and university happened in the same city of Ibadan. Not until he left the shore of the country briefly for his PhD. study at the New York University, USA on scholarship, did he leave Ibadan for once. He returned to the same University of Ibadan to teach. He later shifted his service to the University of Ife (now known as Obafemi Awolowo University) to continue his teaching profession there.
He was a very good student of English language right from his youthful days at high school, where he won prizes for writing good essays and debate competitions. This he maintained up to the university at undergraduate and post-graduate levels. Such proficiency acquired by him in the knowledge of English Language was helped by his nature of being a voracious reader of any title that came his way. His award of First Class Honour in the Department of English Language of the 1969 set no doubt encouraged him to progress in his study and thereby settled for the future in academics.
The group dominated student politics of the period and this was the reason not a few of the students who were members of the Pyrate Confraternity had to join as they were in the first place driven by inquisitiveness and natural rascality to join PC earlier. Some of the students who ended up as Marxist maintained membership of the two groups. No contradiction inherent in this at the time as activities of both groups complemented each other. This was not the type of Pyrate known to the generation of students thereafter.
My encounter with him was in the area of his politics in which he devoted and committed not less enough time of his life. His politics could hardly be differentiated from his profession in academics as a teacher, scholar, writer, and activism. His activism could be regarded as natural and traced to an event way back to his high school days in the final year when he was expelled from the school, but he passed out in WASC in flying colour. He was to be denied admission to Government College for six form (HSC) despite the fact that he topped the entrance examination of the school. This was the wish of his former principal that expelled him in Ibadan Boys High School, who reached out to his would be new principal but the latter refused to carry out such machination to nib on bud the future of a young aspiring and talented student like BJ. The principal of the latter school confirmed to BJ his unwillingness to cooperate with his former principal on this. Hardly any serious minded principal of note would want to deny admission to such a brilliant student.
On his own, BJ turned down the admission to the school on the ground of the government policy that caused transferring the new students of his set to Aiyetoro Comprehensive High School. Nevertheless, he had his own plan in sitting at home to study for the same examination. This he did and passed and thereby entered the University of Ibadan at the same time with his other colleagues who went to HSC in the year. In his first year at UI, he received the best student award. According to him, this was not out of design as it was not as a result of conscious effort but achieved effortlessly out of his accumulated wealth of knowledge acquired from his voracious readings that has turned round to be a habit and tradition. This he carried to the university with him and remained with him for the rest of his life.
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At the University of Ibadan, he came across two traditions of extra-curriculum activities intertwined with scholarship and politics. These were the Marxist School of Thought and cultural revivalism being promoted by Comrade Ola Oni and Wole Soyinka, respectively. Wole Soyinka was very much appealing to not a few students who entered the University of Ibadan as Pyrate Confraternity that he instituted together with others while a student of the university over a decade earlier. Though Wole Soyinka did not enter the university as a lecturer until 1969, when BJ was in his final year as an undergraduate. Soyinka transferred his services to the University of Ibadan from the University of Lagos. Though much impact of Soyinka on BJ could not have been expected within this limited time; but much was achieved as BJ belonged to the Pyrate Confraternity that had a certain set of values shared by members. So before BJ met Soyinka in a classroom setting, he already had cause to share with him some values that had to do with cultural nationalism and resistance.
At the same time, it was hard for any student with an open mind, free of any incumberance, not to be infectious with the idea of Marxism outside the classroom. Comrade Ola Oni, who instituted this school of thought, started teaching at the University of Ibadan in 1963. He took up the challenge of introducing Marxist courses in the Department of Economics, taught by him as he claimed that each teacher should be free and independent to design his/her own curriculum of teaching. He did not end here. Beyond the classroom, he introduced scholarly study groups amongst the students and lecturers meant to promote Marxist scholarship and activism. Their activities became successful and could not be ignored by any change seeking student on the campus or outside it. The group dominated student politics of the period and this was the reason not a few of the students who were members of the Pyrate Confraternity had to join as they were in the first place driven by inquisitiveness and natural rascality to join PC earlier. Some of the students who ended up as Marxist maintained membership of the two groups. No contradiction inherent in this at the time as activities of both groups complemented each other. This was not the type of Pyrate known to the generation of students thereafter. The event of the burial of Kunle Adepeju, a martyr of the 1971 student struggle was a case of collaboration between the political and cultural groups as MSM and PC in the organisation of a befitting burial for their colleague whose life was cut short by the state that could not manage student crisis when one arises.
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Hence was the mass support for Marxism at the University of Ibadan, but the study of Marxism as part of the school curriculum was limited to the Economics Department – the courses introduced and taught by Ola Oni. This was the very reason that Biodun Jeyifo charged that students of Marxism did not follow Ola Oni to his classroom like Omafume Onoge. He made this point known while giving a lecture on the occasion of the burial ceremony of Professor Omafume Onoge in Effurun, Delta State. Onoge would be recalled as an intrinsic member of the Ola Oni’s group. He was an anthropologist. He entered the University of Ibadan, Department of Sociology, in 1969 as a lecturer to teach sociology and anthropology. Before long, he introduced the sociology of literature to the department. The course was basically taught with Marxist approach and perspective even when it was not named Marxist Sociology of Literature. Students who registered for the course extended beyond the department and faculty of social sciences but also included students from the faculty of arts, including those that major in literature and languages from the faculty. This was how the course became a must for students of literature and languages, even when it was not a compulsory course but embraced voluntarily by the students concerned. This mass followership and traffic of students to Onoge’s class became lessoned with the return of Biodun Jeyifo from New York University to the University of Ibadan with a PhD. degree in literature. He thereafter introduced Marxist Sociology of Literature to the curriculum of the department. The students of the department and that of the faculty thereafter had no cause to borrow such course from the faculty of social sciences any longer.
Biodun Jeyifo returned back to the University of Ibadan in 1975 and the University was at the centre of struggles of the student movement of the period, which substantially resulted in sacking the Gowon led military government that was suffocated with cases of corruption allegation by many of its commissioners. But the government behaved helplessly and refused to act on those.
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The government led by Murtala Mohammed, which followed in 1975, behaved proactively to check various cases of corruption and inefficiency in the system. He took a hardline approach in prosecuting his policies in this regard. He also had the support of the masses in the fight against the South Africa Apartheid system. Unlike the past colonial and post-colonial governments, the government was the first of its kind to associate with the student movement by bringing it closer to itself and holding consultative meetings on policies of the government. This was the reason the student movement rose in unison simultaneously on receiving the news of the coup that snuffed life from Murtala Mohammed and protested against the coup before the coup was aborted.
The only way I can say I followed BJ in his profession as a teacher of literature and literary critic was in reading many of his essays in Guardian newspaper and West Africa magazine based in Lagos and London respectively. These included interviews he had with Wole Soyinka and the interviews he had with the press on discussing Wole Soyinka. So, the press was full of materials on his reviews and critics on Wole Soyinka as a literary giant that worth to be studied. The same were his reviews on another giant in literature – Professor Irele. I am also not unaware of some fine literary minds like Kole Omotosho, who took side with Wole Soyinka rather than other Marxist critics.
The cordial relationship that existed in the management of government and the students’ relationship did not last long after Olusegun Obasanjo took over power. So the relationship broke down, and Murtala Mohammed was betrayed by his second-in-command, in person of Olusegun Obasanjo, who replaced him. The new phase of the anti-poor policy of the government that increased school fees by removing subsidy in the student feeding allowance caused the “Ali-Must-Go” student revolt of 1978. The movement was the first of its kind in the history of the student movement in Nigeria as it covered nooks and cranies of the country. The government mischievously acted in blaming the victims as a way of resolving the problem by expelling student leaders and sacking some lecturers alleged to be the brain behind the resistance by the students. Victims were drawn from Ibadan, Lagos, Calabar, and university administrators in Lagos and Zaria. The student and the lecturer unions – National Union of Nigerian Students and the Association of University Teachers respectively were dissolved.
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This prompted the students and the lecturers to rise to the occasion in coming up with a new name and consolidation of their unions on a new footing in 1980. The national delegates conference of the new university teachers then renamed Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) elected Biodun Jeyifo as its first president. The union was responsible for getting back to the universities, all the affected members, who were victims of the 1978 sack. They returned back to work in 1980.
The only way I can say I followed BJ in his profession as a teacher of literature and literary critic was in reading many of his essays in Guardian newspaper and West Africa magazine based in Lagos and London respectively. These included interviews he had with Wole Soyinka and the interviews he had with the press on discussing Wole Soyinka. So, the press was full of materials on his reviews and critics on Wole Soyinka as a literary giant that worth to be studied. The same were his reviews on another giant in literature – Professor Irele. I am also not unaware of some fine literary minds like Kole Omotosho, who took side with Wole Soyinka rather than other Marxist critics. This Left Opposition to Wole Soyinka School of thought in literature was led by Omafume Onoge while they were both in the University of Ibadan and comprised other supporters as Femi Osofisan, Biodun Jeyifo, G. G. Darah, Niyi Osundare, Leslie Ogundipe, etc.
The last time I met him at the wake-keep programme of the burial of Professor Omafume Onoge, I heard him telling G. G. Darah of how he would want his wake-keep to be organised. He was not actually opposed to the programme, which, according to him, the dead can not decree how he/she is to be buried. But he was after the particular songs he would prefer for such burial.
In the 1980s, upon the establishment of Guardian Newspaper, it was a flourishing era in publishing literary articles and reviews of men of letters from the ivory towers and the platform was utilised to help the cause of promoting creative writings. Some of them include Femi Osofisan, Yemi Ogunyemi, Edwin Madunagu, G. G. Darah, who took to full-time journalism working for the newspaper. The Leftists in the literary profession dominated the pages of the Guardian newspaper of that era; could be compared with how generation before them that included Ola Oni, Sam Ikoku, Nkenna Nzimiro, Bade Onimode, Claude Ake, Omafume Onoge, Segun Osoba, Mokwugo Okoye, Okwudiba Nnoli, Patrick Wilmot, Bala Usman, Chimere Ikoku, Essien Udon, Eskor Toyo, Tunji Otegbeye, and others dominated the pages of Daily Times in the 1970s.
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My personal encounter with Professor Biodun Jeyifo was more in the field of the left politics that his generation served as a source of motivation and encouragement to my generation. I could recall how Victor Adebamgbe, the president of the Student Union Council of The Polytechnic Ibadan, invited Dr. Dipo Fasina to their function as a guest lecturer to educate the generality of the students. I was enthused not only with the quality of the lecture being delivered but also with the way his colleagues drawn from Ife Collectives accompanied him to that occasion. They packed themselves inside a blue Volkswagon Beetle to the venue of the occasion and back to Ife. This pattern of members of the Ife Collectives was also the case on the occasion of the launching of the Yoruba version of the Manifesto of the Communist Party authored by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels that was translated by Baba Omojola. The event held at the Iyaganku Press Centre was attended by Comrades Baba Omojola, Michael Imoudu, Ola Oni, Laoye Sanda, Akin Ojo, Omotoye Olorode, Biodun Jeyifo, G. G. Darah, Dipo Fasina, Bade Onimode, Segun Osoba, Benedict Madunagu, Biodun Olamosu, Alhaji, etc
It must be said of BJ that he was active both in theory and practice. There was a day he came to Ola Oni’s residence. I was the only one around in the premises, and he dropped a message that comrades in Ife had gone underground. He vanished almost immediately. This was the era of Ibrahim Babandida maximum military junta when he had exhausted his human rights perfume, the matra upon which he came to power and thereafter launched his draconial human rights abuses.
Biodun Jeyifo was also a leading member of the planned Peasant Commune to work with the peasants to organise a guerillae revolutionary war in rescuing the poor masses from the hands of their oppressors and the system of oppression that remains our albatross up to the present times unresolved. For anyone deciding to take this cause of action, it amounts to taking huge risks of bigger dimension and sacrifice. Peasant Commune was the fashion in the 1970s/80s, especially in Latin America, and such an idea was supported by some Leftists in the country. The shortcoming of this idea is obvious as it was meant to achieve revolution on behalf of the oppressed people rather than the Marxist view of the working people being the litmus test of history in bringing about revolution themselves.
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The last time I met him at the wake-keep programme of the burial of Professor Omafume Onoge, I heard him telling G. G. Darah of how he would want his wake-keep to be organised. He was not actually opposed to the programme, which, according to him, the dead can not decree how he/she is to be buried. But he was after the particular songs he would prefer for such burial. I was more than encouraged for his demonstration of scholarship on being the guest lecturer on the occasion of Onoge’s burial. As a distinguished professor of African Literature at Harvard University, USA, where Omafume Onoge also graduated and had his PhD, BJ printed Onoge’s thesis on Aiyetoro Commune titled: “Aiyetoro, The Successful Utopia: A Sociological Study of the Holy Apostles Community in Nigeria,” for the purpose of this being preserved and domiciled in Nigeria and on African soil as a product of a genius.
May the soul of Professor Biodun Jeyifo rest in power.
Comrade Olamosu is the General Secretary, Socialist Labour and can be reached via +234 812 504 8832
