His photo, in repose, in Ibadan last week transported a chill to the spine. Professor Biodun Jeyifo was not made for silence, as he seemed in that terminal state in his casket. Only the first days of this year, just less than quarter ago, we all gathered at the Muson Centre to serenade him. Enter Wole Soyinka. Enter Professors Ropo Sekoni and Chima Anyadike and Dr. Yemi Ogunbiyi. Enter Governor Kayode Fayemi.
Enter Marxists, activists, friends, mentees and well-wishers. Enter former students. Enter intellectual verve. Exit boredom. In that hall, all were glad to be with him to chat, chant, spar and pine over the spices of his life.
At the end, we sang a song of him as a jolly good fellow, a tune led by Femi Falana.
After anchoring a session of reminiscences that afternoon, I announced in a burst of naïve hope to an entranced audience: “See you on his 90th.” False prophets sometimes deserve pardon. I must do penance.
A touching moment on stage. I was beside him and he remarked, “Sam, I used to be as tall as you. See how I have shrunken.” Not really. B.J. was even taller in his bloomy years, in his days when he puffed his nifty cigar, when he loped rather than walk, when his hands made a furious circle of gesticulation in the air as he stressed a point of dialectic. I held his hand and tried to walk him off stage until a young lady overthrew my self-assigned role.
They don’t make Marxists like B.J. anymore. He was not a faithful in a pious sense, but even the very priests of established faith could learn a thing or two from him. If he were a Christian, he might have been an adherent of the injunction of Christ. “Be thou faithful till the end, and I will give you the crown of life.”
Karl Marx might have envied this faithful. He did it in his pedagogy, in his life as an activist, as ASUU president in duelling with capitalists on campus and outside. Few remember that B.J. gathered quite a few Marxists in a commune in the Southwest, and they wanted to build a society of believers in material progress. One of them was the unforgettable writer Edwin Madunagu. On his 70th birthday celebration at the Obafemi Awolowo University, B.J. listened with aplomb as Madunagu reeled out some of the failings and misadventure of a dream. They left all, just as religious faithful do, for the cause of showing to the world a commune as a model. It reminded one of the Aiyetoro experiment when a Christian sect tried to implant the virtues of Christ in a town. It also failed.
It was a testament to how theory fail when humans corrupt it. B.J. was a true believer. He was Karl Marx’s secular priest in this part of the world. Yet, he was a secular priest without the cants and canons in his daily life. As Kunle Ajibade recalls in his tribute, he was a man for all seasons, apology to Robert Bolt. Professor Anyadike penned a soulful tribute about his humanity. He was warm to his students, just like a good priests and teacher. I was his student, too, at Ife, and he did not carry dialectical materialism as a toga. He taught with aloof benevolence. I had heard of him as a great teacher, and mentor even before I attended his class. But it was in his tutorial that I knew him at close quarters.
I always saw Marx in his views even when he tried to play it down. I thought that was a virtue. He did not conceal. He moderated his convictions as a tribute to a world of diversity. For instance, in interrogating a work by Franz Kafka, Metamorphosis, many were looking at the other perspectives why Gregor Samsa turned into an insect on his bed. He looked at it from the fact that his family was exploiting him and his change of form was a rebellion against economic predation. But he allowed others to bring out their own views while showing a clear bias.
His play Haba director, about exploitation and tyranny, was his one strong move into creative writing. But he excelled as a critic. He was an expert on Soyinka and Achebe, and he never allowed his belief to undermine the works of these two artists when clearly were no Marxists, although Soyinka often shows a sympathy for socialism. The bard’s immersion in myth would not let him.
I recall during a lunch at Marcy College at the University of Toronto, a young professor teaching at the University of Queens in Canada wanted to know if I knew a certain professor in New York. She could not recall his name, but he described him with his beard and kahki and his Marxist ways.
“He was my teacher. His name is Biodun Jeyifo,” I announced. She almost hugged me. She raved about his brilliance and integrity. She did not know how proud I was that afternoon in Toronto.
In his 70th birthday celebration, I described him as a Marxist in a post-Marxist world. He responded generously in what I saw as a dig. He said I was right in a general sense but not in a personal sense. I agree. I did not undermine his faith. I admired his consistency in a world of shifting sands. Indeed, I believe that we need Marxist perspectives in this world of rabid acquisitions. This is the age of the superrich. Never has the earth, and even Nigeria, witnessed individual wealth as we know today. And never have the poor been so miserable as Thomas Piketty has demonstrated in his book Capital in the 21th Century and subsequent interventions. If you visit New York, you cannot forget the echoes of John Galbraith’s The Affluent Society, where he laments high rises looking over potholes in the richest district in the world, Manhattan, New York.
At the end of the symposium at Muson Centre, B.J. insisted that we must always fight for equality. It might be his last exhortation.
Yet, we cannot understand B.J. without his childhood. Dr. Ogunbiyi gave us a graphic mirror of an intransigent youth, a boy genius who would not obey rules, was expelled from his high school. He was redeemed by his brilliance to enter Government College Ibadan when the principal, a white man, accepted him in spite of warnings from his estranged principal. B.J.’s scores were irresistible. I think B.J. fermented his rage into a social and intellectual rebellion. He became man rather than brute. He converted his rebellion into legacy of value. Who knows Pyrates and Soyinka may have something to do with it.
Ogunbiyi’s wife recalls his father was a respected Christian in the community. He chose another piety. She also recalls an evening at the University of Ibadan when she saw B.J. in full Pyrate Confraternity gear. He hailed him to stop, but B.J. ignored the childhood friend and she followed him until he disappeared. The next day B.J. would deny. Yet, later in life, she sent a well-packaged fish delicacy through B.J. when both were living in Abeokuta to her then boyfriend Ogunbiyi in Ibadan. B.J. kept the dainty delight in his pocket through the trip. He met with Ogunbiyi but returned to Abeokuta before he remembered the message.
His relationship with Soyinka is fascinating as I have relayed before. He was mentee and rebel at the same time. He was an advocate of Soyinka’s poetics but not his ideology. He resisted Soyinka as a teacher and then became not only his favourite student but the bard defended him so he had a first class. Soyinka also opened his way to stardom with referrals.
As a secular priest, B.J. tended to his brood of students and activists, in ideas and attention. But his best gift was example. If Marxism is a relic, he was its living apostle.
