A human being can save your life without your knowing it. The way I operated back in time could have led to my utter perdition. One of my teachers, Professor Adebayo Williams, who just celebrated his 75th birthday, did my life a world of good when I was a student at the University of Ife – now, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.
Let’s get Prof Adebayo Williams to write it as it happened in his inimitable words, thus: “…I had decided to poach the best and brightest students from different tutorials. My thinking was that they would give me a good run for my money. Among the harvest were: Simon Ibe, Dili Ezughah, Tejumola Olaniyan, Kemi Ilori. Maxim Uzoatu joined the group later. He had written an essay for me which turned out to be a savage tirade against all the lecturers in the department. Since yours sincerely was no stranger to such suicidal procedures, I had to seek the chap out for urgent rehabilitation.”
It’s so ennobling to my soul that me and my mentoring teacher have remained friends ever since. When I phoned him up to congratulate him on his 75th birthday as “an ageing columnist”, as he jocularly tags himself, he was as ever his bubbly self inside the precincts of Ikoyi Club, Lagos.
Adebayo Williams was a young and handsome lecturer at Ife, so dashing that all the irresistible youthful university lady students competed to nail him for good! How he survived the sorority onslaught is beyond my ken as his poor student nicknamed “Maximum Trouble” for his many troubles!
A lot of people these days only know Adebayo Williams as a columnist and public intellectual without paying requisite due to his triumphs as a novelist.
His award-winning first novel, The Year Of The Locusts, published in the esteemed 1980s Longmans Drumbeats series, tells the compelling story of the principled radical lecturer, Dr. Joseph Ademola, popularly hailed as ‘Dale, who fights professional immorality but ends up falling in love with the student femme fatale Titi that leads to emotional and psychological calamity and suicide.
The international status of Prof Adebayo Williams as a global scholar is assured. He distinguished himself in the Centre of African Studies, University of Birmingham, England in the 1990s. I remember being lodged in Arabella Court, London with Ovation publisher, Chief Dele Momodu, who brought the news that Prof Adebayo Williams was in town. Being his students, we invited him over beers to thrash out literary and contemporary matters from noonday to nighttime.
In the United States, he served as Professor of Liberal Arts, Savannah College of Art and Design. He was a Fellow of African Studies Centre, University of Leiden in The Netherlands.
It was in 2004 that he became Amy Freeman Lee Distinguished Chair of Humanities and Fine Arts, University of the Incarnate Word, San Antonio, Texas, USA.
A much sought-after columnist, his column graced the pages of Newswatch magazine as well as the London-based Africa Today, and remains today the star attraction of Nation newspaper. A dear friend of mine, Prof (Barrister) Ifechukwu Ndianefo of Philosophy Department, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, revealed to me that he has religiously read every column written by Prof Adebayo Williams, and I made his day by getting him to talk to his hero on phone.
For Prof Adebayo Williams, there is hardly any divide between Town and Gown. He engages his society at all times, and in all spheres. He served as Chirman of Lagos State Electoral Reform Panel as well as Chairman of the Lagos State Gubernatorial Advisory Panel. A Trustee of Obafemi Awolowo Institute for Governance and Public Policy, he is the quintessence of the Yoruba Omoluabi ethos. He bears the traditional title of Asiwaju Otun Olufi of Gbongan, Osun State.
Prof Adebayo Williams was the winner of the coveted AllahDe Odunewu Prize for Informed Commentary in 1993 and 2000.
Given what is happening in Nigeria today in the shape and size of democratic leadership, it is crucial to go back to a couple of Adebayo Williams’ novels, notably The Remains Of The Last Emperor and Bulletin from the Land of Living Ghosts.
The Remains Of The Last Emperor was published in 1994 and won the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA) Prose Prize in 1995. A mad tyrant-cum-bandit becomes the country’s ruler in this absurd tale of gross leadership failure in which loonies act out the roles of civil rights activists, amid elite collusion in service of absolute authoritarianism.
Bulletin From The Land Of Living Ghosts is the 2002 novel of Adebayo Williams which bears the sub-title Romance In The Reign Of Commander Cobra. Set in the fictional land of Muleria, a combo of Nigeria and Malaria, this bizarre novel narrates the mad excesses of miltary dictatorship, but observers of the current democratic dispensation may not be in the position to tell the difference! The ghosts of the past have become the non-beings of the here and now and the future! Things do change in Nigeria, but they almost always end up remaining the same – and worse!
The professor who gave me rehabilitation, Prof Adebayo Williams deserves celebration at 75 -and beyond!
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