The symposium featured a panel session, titled ‘Pedagogy for liberation: Then and now,’ which brought together former students and mentees of Professor Jeyifo. This includes Kunle Ajibade, Co-founder TheNEWS and PM NEWS; Bisi Anyadike, Proprietress Sunshine Nursery & Primary School, Ile-Ife, Nigeria, and Ogaga Ifowodo, Lawyer and Poet, in a reflective conversation moderated by Sam Omatseye, Chairperson Editorial Board, The Nation. Bisi Adeleye-Fayemi recalled her first impression of a “craggy old man” in dark brown needle trousers and a half-buttoned shirt who instantly “spellbound” the class the moment he began to speak. Despite never dictating a single word of notes, his classes were the most active and consistently full.
Kunle Ajibade and Oagao, noted that while BJ was “stingy with marks,” he was incredibly generous with his ideas and even his personal funds, often taking students out for meals. He fostered a “renaissance” in his students, encouraging them to question their “mesmerized vision” of colonial superiority.
A powerful tribute from human rights lawyer Femi Falana, who identified himself as an “external student” of Professor Jeyifo. Falana also credited BJ with “inciting” him into his life of activism, noting that the “entire left on campus” led by figures like BJ made his graduation possible despite his “riotous” or stubborn nature as a student.
Falana highlighted BJ’s “humane character” during his tenure as ASUU President, a period where BJ worked tirelessly to:
- Reinstated Radical Lecturers by ensuring that Marxist lecturers dismissed by the military junta in 1978 were brought back to their positions.
- Protect Expelled Students by advocating for students expelled from various universities, ensuring they had the chance to graduate.
- Organise Legal Resistance: Falana noted BJ’s “constant harassment” of him to not act alone but to organise lawyers as a functional tribe for social change.
Falana concluded by sharing how he is translating BJ’s intellectual radicalism into enforceable law. He cited recent court victories establishing the right to free and compulsory education for every Nigerian child and the enforcement of social investment acts as direct extensions of the struggles BJ championed.
In Part 3 of this series, we examined the keynote lecture titled “Who is Afraid of Decolonization?” delivered by Professor Priya Gopal of Cambridge University. Read about it here
