Is BJ truly dead? No—he cannot be. People like him do not die. They live on in the minds they shaped, in the convictions they nurtured, and in the courage they stirred in generations of students. Death may still the body, but it cannot silence a voice that has taken root in so many hearts.
When my colleague, Kunle Ajibade and his darling wife, arrived a bit late at my son’s wedding on January 5, the explanation was simple and touching: they had just come from the venue in Lagos, where BJ’s 80th birthday activities were being celebrated. But for the demands of the wedding, I too would have been part of that distinguished gathering of former students, colleagues, and admirers. Another friend and classmate, Mrs. Bisi Anyadike, also came in from there. I can imagine the hall—surely filled with our generation from the University of Ife, men and women whose lives he had shaped in ways both profound and lasting.
BJ was never just a lecturer to us. He was, at once, a father, a friend, and a teacher. He guided without imposing, corrected without humiliating, and encouraged without flattery. You could approach him with intellectual doubts, personal anxieties, or even the uncertainties of youth, and he would listen—truly listen—before speaking in that calm, reflective manner that made you feel wiser simply by being in his presence. He had the rare gift of making each of us feel seen and valued.
His class on Politics and Ideology in African Literature was always seminal—one of those rare spaces where learning felt like discovery rather than obligation. He did not merely teach texts; he opened windows into history, power, resistance, and the moral burdens of the writer in society. Through his voice, literature ceased to be ink on paper; it became a living conversation about Africa, about justice, and about the responsibilities of the thinking mind.
Those were not just lectures; they were encounters. They shaped how many of us came to see the world, to question authority, and to appreciate the profound link between art and the destiny of a people. He was, in every sense, a teacher of teachers—a man whose influence multiplied itself in the lives and works of those he taught.
And yet, beyond the classroom, there was the warmth of the man himself. His humanity was as instructive as his scholarship. He laughed with us, worried about us, rejoiced in our successes, and quietly guided us through our failures. In his presence, one felt not only taught, but cared for. He built not just students, but a family of minds bound together by respect, curiosity, and affection.
How one wishes it were possible, even for a fleeting hour, to return to those days—to sit once more in that classroom, to listen, to argue, to laugh, and to leave with the mind stirred and the spirit awakened. Some seasons of life pass, but their light never fades. BJ was one of those lights. And lights such as his do not go out; they simply move from the world of sight into the world of memory, where they continue to shine.
