Good night, father of language

Scholars reminisce on life, times of the late Emeritus Professor Ayo Bamgbose

The death of Professor Emeritus Ayorinde Bamgbose, at the age of 94, was announced on Sunday, July 26. Since then, tribute as, far and near, from students, colleagues, friends and family, have been pouring in honour of the great intellectual, international scholar, and astute administrator. The Dean of the Faculty of Arts, University of Ibadan (UI), the Head of the Department of Linguistics and African Languages, UI, and a renowned professor of Linguistics, UI, spoke on the life and legaciesof the late iconic linguist. KINGSLEY ALUMONA bring excerpt:

Professor Rasheed Olaniyi, Dean, Faculty of Arts, University of Ibadan

PROFESSOR Bamgbose was an astute administrator, academic leader who consolidated legacies we met on ground

Professor Ayo Bamgbose served with distinction as the Dean of the Faculty of Arts between 1971 and 1973. He was an astute administrator and academic leader who helped to consolidate many of the legacies that we met on the ground as worthy successors of his achievements.

He was, of course, a great academic icon during his lifetime, having contributed significantly to the growth and development of linguistics, the university, and the academic community at large. He was a great academic pillar in the faculty and in the university. We will all miss his critical insights and academic prowess.

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Dr Gerald Nweya, Head, Department of Linguistics and African Languages

Professor Bamgbose was father of our department; vacuum he left behind, no one can fill it

At the Department of Linguistics, we are honoured to have had someone like Professor Ayo Bamgbose. He was the foundation lecturer, more or less like the founder of our department in those day when linguistics was still a new discipline in Nigeria. In short, most of the other Departments of Linguistics in Nigerian universities are like offshoots of the foundation he laid in the Department of Linguistics and African Languages at the University of Ibadan.

Bamgbose was very kind and accommodating, even to us who are like the seventh generation of linguists. He was someone we had already read about in books. So, for me, it is an honour to have been the Head of the Department of Linguistics while he was still alive.

Throughout the duration of his career, we had only one close encounter with him last year, in November, when we organised our language summit for the reversal of the National Policy on Education, which the Minister of Education cancelled sometime late last year. Professor Bamgbose was someone who was very passionate about the promotion of Nigerian languages. So, we invited him to chair the language summit. We also invited some other resource persons from other universities to discuss the way forward. Even at 94 years, he was still attending symposia and seminars, and presenting talks. But with age, it became more difficult.

At the department, he was someone we revered. He was like the father of the department. He was someone everyone approached and consulted. The emeritus status that was awarded to him was because of his tremendous contributions to the Department of Linguistics at the University of Ibadan and in Nigeria generally. Even though he had that emeritus status, his passion for linguistics remained strong to the extent that he came to his office once every week to have an encounter with us, and people also came to pay him homage.

We honour him. He was a God-fearing person. From the few times I interacted with him, he would tell us history and encourage us to carry on the legacies of the department. We are happy for the life he lived.

He founded many professional associations, including the Nigerian Academy of Letters. He was also a foundation member of the Linguistic Association of Nigeria, the West African Linguistic Society, and many others we do not even know about.

We give God glory for the kind of life he lived, and our prayer is that God should accept his soul in His bosom. I am sure that wherever he is, he is proud, given his contributions and the legacies he left behind. As his family is carrying on, our department is also carrying on. The vacuum he has left, I am not sure any person would be able to fill it because his generation of linguists was a generation where there was no area of specialisation. He was everywhere — literature, phonology, syntax, and other areas.

We thank God for his life and pray that God will comfort his family and give our department the courage to ensure we carry on the legacies he left behind, as we transcend from one generation to the other.

Professor Francis O. Egbokhare, Department of Linguistics and African Languages, former president of NAL

Pursuit of political ends in university is overcrowding expert wisdom, competence; Bamgbose never elevated politics above performance.

Professor Ayo Bamgbose was born in 1932, and was 94 years old this year. It is quite remarkable and almost unbelievable that, at 94, he still attended church service on Sundays and was still living upstairs in his house. He remained actively involved in the affairs of the Linguistics Association of Nigeria and the Nigerian Academy of Letters (NAL), as the foundation president.

He had been retired now for probably longer than he actively served. During his time, the retirement age was between 55 and 60. So, if he retired at 60 and died at 94, that is about 34 years in retirement. If he retired at 55, that is almost 40 years ago. But the remarkable thing about him is that his presence after retirement was even greater than his presence while he was still in active service.

He can easily be described as the doyen of linguistics in Africa. In some respects, his footprints remain unmatched. Nobody has been able to challenge his achievements in terms of global recognition and the kind of respect he earned as a linguist. He was a towering figure in linguistics in Africa and the whole world. He was known everywhere. You do not need to introduce him once you mention his name. He was not someone who needed to be celebrated on social media. He does not need reputation laundry or image propagation.

Beyond all of that, he made profound contributions to the development of African languages and language policy. And, even though he was easily recognised as an outstanding and distinguished academic, he never craved political office. Many people at his level, after attaining his level of prominence in academia, struggled with purpose. But Professor Bamgbose was never interested in that. He focused on his purpose as an academic, and he lived that throughout his life.

As God may have it, he was also one of those academics who retired without having to go into penury, not because of patronage. He was not patronised by any government, not even by the government of his state, Ogun State, or the Federal Government. Rather, it was because of the grace that he enjoyed from God. He was known for being very blunt. And people like that are not always the best fit for political recognition. He was a man of integrity who did not keep secrets. For instance, if you gossip about a person before Bamgbose, he would ask you to wait and invite the person, and say, “Please, that thing you said, repeat it.”

His presence in our department brought enormous stability because we had very strong personalities in the Linguistics Department. He was the stabilising figure in the department. We had very strong personalities in linguistics that the department could easily have been torn apart, but Bamgbose was the stabilising force in the midst of these disparate personalities who were strong and accomplished in their own rights.

We will miss him because of his wisdom, profundity, humanity, and jokes. He cracked some of the most amusing jokes. We will miss him because he was a bridge builder. At his status and the level of his person, some people who are not even up to him would expect to be worshipped, but that was not the Bamgbose we knew. I could easily approach him in the corridor at the department, and we would chat for hours. He never made anyone feel small. He deferred to people’s offices and positions. He would come into the department and defer to the Head of Department.

That is why many people are mourning him. People do not get missed or mourned because they grow very old — that is a mistake most people make — but because they left a legacy. For Bamgbose, it is a legacy that will live much longer because his presence moved very large. We will miss him, but we will continue to pursue the ideals that we learned from him, which is to serve with integrity and humanity. These are how I would characterise him. Those are the two things I learned from him — to serve with integrity and humanity.

I would say I was one of Bamgbose’s great-grand students because I cannot even call myself his student, because my own supervisor was his student. So, we are kind of a second or third generation for him. But I have interacted with him for over 40 years, because I have been in the department since 1985 — first as a postgraduate master’s student and as a lecturer in the department with the benefit of attending meetings with him. I was also the president of the Nigerian Academy of Letters, and he was there as our foundation president. So, we attended meetings together. We ran the affairs and got counsel from him.

I have good grounds to be able to speak about him, and I do not have any reason to worry about what I say about him. I do not need to lie, because there is nothing to lie about. For some people, you will have to look for good things to say, because they say: We should not speak ill of the dead. However, this dead man has nothing, in my opinion, ill that I would want to keep back. None of us is perfect. However, within the limits of human existence, we can say that some people are good. Bamgbose was a good Christian, not a noisy Christian. He was a good Christian who believed in humanity. He was not a tribalist. He was a good Yoruba man. I believe that he loved his people as well, and his philosophy allowed others to thrive.

His achievements and legacies are what the younger generation of academics should emulate to build the university better than they met it. However, everyone, especially the younger generation, is focused too much on politics. The whole idea of the pursuit of political ends is overcrowding expert wisdom. And the workings towards certain agendas are overriding competence. Bamgbose never elevated agendas or politics above competence and performance. I have a personal experience of that when I was being employed. These days, it is, first of all, where are you from? Or what is your religion? So, you can hire a pilot who is from your religion, and you do not mind if he is going to crash you.

Bamgbose’s life also showed that you can actually be successful as an academic without needing to be servile to people. That is another thing we can learn from him. He was disciplined, and he maintained a level of discipline that was rare in this kind of environment. You can take him for his words. I think that honour, discipline, and dignity are very scarce these days. Even the best of the most decorated priests today cannot even measure up to people like Bamgbose, because they swim like pendulums. So, these are things the younger generation can learn or inherit from him, or pay attention to.

And this is to debunk the idea that because you did well as an academic, you would necessarily be a poor man. Professor Bamgbose was not a poor person. He was a modest man. He was a man of obvious means, and he lived by the rules. These are the things that we can learn from him, if we still have the capacity to learn at all.