By Nehru Odeh
The Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism (WSCIJ) is set to celebrate distinguished scholar, cultural theorist, Marxist, and literary critic, Professor Biodun Jeyifo (fondly known as BJ), on his 80th birthday in Lagos.
This is in recognition of his contributions not only to scholarship but also to critical thinking, postcolonial literature, and human development.
As debates on decolonisation continue to shape global intellectual and political discourse, the WSCIJ will convene a public symposium in honour of the renowned academic and Professor Emeritus at Cornell University (English) and Harvard University (Comparative Literature and African and American Studies) as he marks this milestone.
The symposium, themed “Who Is Afraid of Decolonisation?”, will hold on Monday, 5 January 2026, at the AGIP Recital Hall, MUSON Centre, Onikan, Lagos, at 9:00 a.m. (WAT).
It will examine Jeyifo’s enduring contributions to curriculum reform, cultural resistance, and critical thought, while interrogating the contemporary relevance of decolonial ideas in education, politics, and public discourse.
The programme will feature a keynote lecture by Priya Gopal, Professor of Postcolonial Studies at the University of Cambridge, titled “Who’s Afraid of Decolonisation? Reflections on Particular Pasts and Planetary Futures.”
The event, which will be chaired by Yemi Ogunbiyi (PhD), Chairman, Tanus Books, Lagos, Nigeria, will include two panel sessions following the keynote lecture.
The first panel will offer critical responses to Gopal’s lecture and will feature Jibrin Ibrahim, Professor of Political Science and Chairman of the Editorial Board, Premium Times; Chidi Amuta (PhD), Chairman, Wilson & Weizman Associates, Lagos; and Akin Adesokan, Professor of Comparative Literature, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA. The session will be moderated by Ropo Sekoni, immediate past Chair of WSCIJ and Professor of Literature in English.
The second panel, themed “Pedagogy for Liberation: Then and Now,” will bring together former students and mentees of Jeyifo to reflect on his influence as a teacher, thinker, and institution-builder. Panellists include Bisi Anyadike (PhD), Proprietress, Sunshine Nursery and Primary School, Ile-Ife, Nigeria; Kunle Ajibade, Co-founder, TheNEWS and PM NEWS; and Ogaga Ifowodo (PhD), lawyer and poet. The session will be moderated by Chima Anyadike, Professor of English, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria.
A major highlight of the symposium will be remarks by the celebrant, Professor Jeyifo, reflecting on curriculum, society, and revolution across generations.
The symposium will convene students, scholars, writers, journalists, and cultural critics, and will conclude with audience interactions, networking, and reflections on Jeyifo’s enduring contribution to African scholarship and critical pedagogy. Members of the public are invited to attend.
Born on 5 January 1946, Jeyifo is a Nigerian academic, critic, public intellectual, cultural theorist, and specialist in world Anglophone literature and culture.
He has attained great prominence in African intellectual circles and transcontinental circuits of academia for his analyses of capitalist modernity and its social and cultural crises. It has been said of him: “No other scholar, apart from Edward Said, Gayatri Spivak, and Homi Bhabha, is more attentive to the radically dispersed accents or strands of postcolonial thinking than BJ.”
Jeyifo is generally regarded as the world’s pre-eminent scholarly authority on the works and career of Wole Soyinka. His award-winning book on the 1986 Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka: Politics, Poetics and Postcolonialism (Cambridge University Press, 2004), is regarded as the most comprehensive study of the author’s work, and the most sophisticated single-author study of any writer in African postcolonial studies.
Aside from numerous critical essays, his scholarly works include The Truthful Lie: Essays in the Sociology of African Drama (1985); Wole Soyinka: Politics, Poetics and Postcolonialism (2004); Things Fall Apart, Things Fall Together (2010); Against the Predators’ Republic (2016); and Apostrophes: To Friendship, Socialism and Democracy (2021).
He served as the first National President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in Nigeria and has remained a notable voice in public discourse through his journalism and critical essays.
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