PIUS
ADESANMI IN LIFE, DEATH AND VOCATION AS A WRITER- SCHOLAR: ANA’S TRIBUTE
Death
came visiting the Nigerian writing house
yet again. This time it left with a pricy catch in the person of Pius
Adesanmi, literary star, critic, essayist, columnist, teacher, poet, and
foremost intellectual. In an ill fated plane tragedy in Ethiopia yesterday (10
March, 2019), the life and career of a brilliant scholar took flight in a whim
of air, machine failure and breathlessness. The odium of death left a bitter
memory yet again in the collective psyche of Nigerian writers at home and
abroad. A leading light in the academe and a bountiful testament to the
tenacity of the Nigerian education and its literary arm even in the face of
many deprivations, Professor Pius Adesanmi is undoubtedly light gone dim and a
future melting into eternity. To lose a man of letters like Pius Adesanmi is to come to an unavoidable
void. Nigerian writers are wailing inconsolably because Pius was indeed a man
of outstanding words/worlds and a master of his game.
Born in
Isanlu in present Kogi State, Nigeria, Professor Pius Adesanmi had his
education in many schools, graduated into post-secondary education at the
University of Ilorin, Kwara State where he graduated top of his class with a
first class degree in French in 1992, a
Master degree in French from the University of a Ibadan followed in 1998 and a
PhD in French Studies from the University of British Columbia in 2002. His
graduate studies abroad culminated in a high flying academic career in
universities in the United States and Canada, first as an Assistant Professor
of Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania and later Carlton
University, Ottawa, Canada that he joined in 2006, serving and rising to full
professor of literature and African
Studies till his demise in the Ethiopian Airline flight 302.
Prof
Adesanmi’s intellectualism has witnessed unusual progression and stable
productivity undoubtedly a function of his fertile intellect, fecund mind and
global outlook. Not only has he traversed different parts of the world to
dispense with his scholarship but the central tissue of his career especially
lately has been devoted to the nurture of African doctoral scholars to
understand the dynamics of the global intellectual rubrics while also improving
the quality of postgraduate education especially in the humanities in the
continent. This new role left him with the choice of regular travels to host
training sessions and workshops in universities in different parts of the
continent in Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria among other places. With the
support of colleagues and mentees he established the African Doctoral Lounge,
an online interactive forum that engages postgrads and provides much needed
network space for postgraduate students and post doctoral fellows to connect
with the best of counsel and support from different parts of the world. A keen
watcher of the development of the African academe and an astute contributor to
the sustainable popularity of the Nigerian literary environment, Prof. Pius
Adesanmi delivered the keynote address for the annual convention of the
Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) held in Uyo, Akwa Ibom State
in 2012 where he spoke on “ What Does ( Nigerian) Literature Secure?”
A devoted
writer and author of many books and articles in all genres of literature
including The Wayfarer and Other Poems (2001), which won the ANA poetry
Prize for that year, You’re not a Country, Africa (2011), Naija no de
Carry Last (2015) but particularly also an ardent literary critic and
assessor of the outputs of the literary establishment.Pius Adesanmi as he was
fondly called within the writers circles here in Nigeria and abroad brought
unusual verve to the theorizing of literature, African studies and the ideas
that have shaped the post-colonial understanding of the African continent. His
oeuvre parades piquant intersection on African literature in addition to a
scribal tome honouring his avowed literary activism. He was brave in his views
and wrote with the heart of a writer risking all to register the urge of his
muse. Notably urbane, calculated and cerebral, Pius Adesanmi leaves a big bag
of accolades, literary works, awards but much more, a teeming population of
adherents and mentees who saw in him a a father figure and one that is willing
and able to steer them to the land of intellectual success. Most notably
conscious of his mortality, Adesanmi is known to have committed to living for
the moment as may well be seen in his last post, (that may well be taken as his
epitaph) before boarding the ill fated flight.
ANA
mourns Prof. Pius Adesanmi. Nigerian writers are deeply pained by this most
untimely and unanticipated passage. The global community of African scholars
sorely feels the pangs of this painful exit of a friend, colleague and comrade.
While nothing can be done to reverse this chapter of the book of Pius’s life,
and in the most equanimous acceptance of divine will over all else, the
Association of Nigerian Authors sympathizes with his family, friends and
colleagues here and at Carlton and enjoins ANA chapters to commiserate with our
sister chapter in Kogi over this loss while also in our usual tradition of
strength in the face of adversity engage in activities that will immortalize
him in readings, talks and literary activities dedicated to his memory. ANA
shall in this direction further dedicate the forthcoming ANA/AE-FUNAI
Conference on Literary Criticism with the theme “ Nigeria’s Literary Criticism
in an Expanding Space of Creative Writing and Digital Production in the 21st
Century” , scheduled for 2-3 July, 2019, to his memory in addition to other
steps towards his immortalization in the future.
Adieu,
Pius Adesanmi!
Denja
Abdullah
Ofonime Inyang, PhD
President General
Secretary
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