Professor Ayo Banjo

By Biodun Jeyifo

If eschatology is philosophical and theological thought and discourse(s) pertaining to the last, final things about this life and the “life” that will follow it after this one, it is not eschatology that is primarily on my mind as I mourn the passing of our beloved teacher and mentor, Professor Ayo Banjo. I speak of “our” teacher and mentor here because without presuming to speak for them, I am thinking here of so many other students of the late former VC of UI with whom I have shared countless rounds of expressions of wonder and gratitude for what we received from our mentor. Among these are three bosom friends who were also students of Prof Banjo. They are Yemi Ogunbiyi, Femi Osofisan and Niyi Osundare.

I have dared to invoke their names here without asking for their permission because I am absolutely certain that like me, it is not eschatology that will primarily be on their minds as they, too, privately mourn the transition of our mentor. So, if not eschatology, then what? It is, quite simply, the life that Professor Banjo lived itself through the years and decades that we knew him and drew immeasurably from the abundance of his graciousness, generosity, kindness and good cheer. This is what, like me, I think Yemi, Femi, and Niyi will have on their minds, not eschatology. Among the four of us, Yemi is the only (still) practicing Christian or religionist. I am not sure whether, like Femi, Niyi is a lapsed Christian; all I know is that like WS, his “religious” and philosophical thought and sensibilities are deeply inflected with refinements of Yoruba/African animist teachings about life and existence.

If anyone reading this tribute to and celebration of our teacher and mentor are wondering what this perambulation about eschatology is about, here’s my clarification: Professor Banjo was a practicing Christian and so are many members of the Banjo family. For this reason, eschatology must be on their minds as they bid their father/grandfather/uncle/cousin farewell to eternal life with God, the Savior and the saints. I am in profound agreement with their eschatological wishes and prayers for the eternal soul of the departed. But I simply wish to register herein that eschatology is not the only dimension through and in which we should celebrate his life: he was here and he will be remembered here on this plane of existence!

I personally used to marvel at the sheer moral and spiritual enormity of the fact that of all the men and women that I have met and known well in my life, Professor Banjo was one of two people – two people only – of or about whom I never heard anyone speak ill. Yes: only two and Professor Banjo was one of the two! And also, as I wrote in my celebration of his life when he turned 80, he was one of only THREE teachers in the course of my education from primary school level to the conclusion of my postgraduate studies whose intellectual unraveling of the “mysteries”, the perplexities of the most challenging moments in my education enabled me to become who and what I am today as a scholar and teacher myself. Please, I ask of all readers of this piece, with such a bequest from Professor Banjo, why would I be fixated on eschatology in my celebration of his life, why?

So therefore, it is a little, little bit of eschatology that I will invoke in my final words of peroration in celebration of his life.
Most of us, most of human beings who have lived and will live in the future ahead of us will not be remembered beyond at most fifty to a hundred years after they are gone. Beyond that, only a few will be remembered, that is to say remembered in ways and terms close to how they were known, admired, respected and cherished in their lifetimes. I confess that this is as much a wish as a guesswork for my/our beloved teacher and mentor.

Do you see, dear readers, dear fellow mourners and celebrants, why I have tried so hard to stay clear of eschatology in this tribute? No matter how much you try to steer clear from it, it sneaks back into the equation, the summation! For is it not the case that a case for qualification for being remembered in this life is itself quasi-eschatological? Well, so be it: eschatology or no eschatology, you will not be forgotten, Professor Ayo Banjo. And speaking now only for myself, I know that when I think of you, when I remember that you were here, the remembrance will be accompanied by a wish to pass on the great bequest that you left me/us – as I have tried to do in this farewell tribute.

*Professor Biodun Jeyifo, radical literary theorist, teacher, author, unionist, columnist, essayist and an atheist with one foot in the agnostic equivalence of belief and unbelief and another foot in inter-faith ecumenism, sent this tribute from Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.