In the early hours of Saturday March 4, 2017, the light dimmed for Professor Benedict Ebelenna Obumselu, simply known as Professor Ben Obumselu.
Eight years later, we continue to remember the man who was one of Africa’s most erudite scholars of the late 20th century and early 21st century.
Hereunder are snippets from select tributes to the iconic Professor Obumselu.
A HOVERING PRESENCE RECAPTURED
A solid academic, one of the pioneers of the distinctive University of Ibadan brand, and one whose personality helped to shape Nigeria’s collegial culture before its later debasement… Ben had a quiet, yet social temperament, was active in a number of campus clubs, brought his sharp mind to bear on both academic and political discourse…
——— Professor Wole Soyinka,
THE ERUDITE OXONIAN
Ben Obumselu – scholar, orator, critic, lover of the Humanities – it is not easy to speak of him without a flood of memories. And so, where does one start.
You should have heard him as orator, giving citation on Pius Okigbo. I wonder where he was when Ibadan belatedly honoured Kenneth Dike.
——— Professor Kalu Uka
AN EGALITARIAN NIGERIAN
Professor Ben Obumselu was a truly erudite and well-spoken scholar… Ben Obumselu was among the few older students whose comportment and manner of speech, some of us endeavoured to emulate
——— Chief Emeka Anyaoku
THE PERSON AND THE PERSONA
As a person, Professor Ben Obumselu was a great soul, gentle in his furious knowledge about nearly everything, urbane, helpful, resourceful, courageous and calm in the face of adversity. The shy enigmatic candour of his smile emphasises his approachability. His come-unto-me ability to connect with humanity was near divine, with his greatest human virtue being his unassumingly simple nature that attracts all and sundry to him. Prof was a friend of the low and unknown as well as the high and mighty, leaving no one inadequate while at it. And as a persona, his life was lived to the full as the main character of a best-selling novel. In this light, the novelist, journalist and literary scholar, Adebayo Williams, describes our revered prof thus: ‘’Obumselu’s life reads like the stuff of hair-raising fables and he himself appears like a protagonist, straight out of some nineteenth- century European novel. Obumselu has packed in a lifetime enough adventures to last six conventional existences’’.
——— Dr. Reginald Facah
AN INTELLECTUAL METEOR
Prof. Ben Obumselu was different things to different people; it depends on the angle from which you want to perceive him. He was a man of ideas, a literary critic, a political actor, an Igbo patriot, a raconteur, a distinguished professor of literature and literary ideas, one of the brightest of his time, a quintessential scholar and father of modern African literary criticism.
He was a committed intellectual who identified with the yearnings and aspirations of his people. He helped bring to life the inspirational Ahiaria Declaration in the moment of pain and death, in order to give hope to a brave and beleaguered army of freedom fighters. And when all was over, he was available to pen down a surrender text that did not demean defeat.
——— Professor Ihechukwu Madubuike
FAREWELL TO THE RESPONSIBLE CRITIC
For Ben Obumselu was there at the infancy of what we now know as modern written African Literature. One of the most widely ready, liberally educated and profoundly cerebral scholars Nigeria has ever produced, he was there at the birthing of that literature, participated in its naming rites, had a hand in its nurturing and never shifted his attention from it growth and development. Meticulous in research, Catholic in intellectual range, his work on the influence of Marxism on African literature remains one of his seminal, if controversial (qua polemical) achievements. A truly peripatetic scholar, Obumselu plied his trade in some of the world’s best universities – Ibadan, Oxford, Birmingham, the Sorbonne- while the leading universities in Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo), Zambia and Botswana had a taste of his scholarly and pedagogical prowess. Back home in Nigeria (at last), he was one of those who nurtured the Liberal Arts faculty in the then fledgling Imo (now Abia) State University into national and international eminence.
——— Professor Niyi Osundare
HE LIVES ON
He was a first rate intellectual who took literary scholarship on Africa to new heights. Personally, I will long remember his weighty and illuminating evaluation of my work and its relationship to that of Joseph Conard. He has passed on, but his spirit continues to walk among us.
——— Professor Ngugi wa Thiong’o
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