Good night, My Prof

He was from Ede, the town of Sango; and so, when death came, it struck with the grating harshness of a thunderclap—sudden, shattering, and deeply wounding. Buried last Tuesday; his fidau is tomorrow Tuesday. Life is a fine mix of joys, troubles and sorrows.

My first contact with Professor Siyan Oyeweso was about seventeen years ago when we both served on an Osun State delegation to Brazil for a cultural assignment. We met there, and from that very moment, struck a bond that endured like that of brothers right up to the moment he breathed his last last week.

Prof was one of those rare men who felt at home with everyone, across all divides. He was, perhaps, one of the very few people I knew who effortlessly combined the swags of a socialite with the gravitas of an academic. He loved his ancestral town, Ede, with a passion, as well as his home, Sekona, where he buried his mother.

His tenure as Executive Director of the Centre for Black Culture and International Understanding (CBCIU), Osogbo, was a time of unbroken activity. Under his leadership, the centre was revved up with programmes from the beginning of the year to the very end. He was intrepid, restless, and relentless in pursuit of results. When I was to be made secretary of the trustees’ board of that centre and I hesitated, Prof sat firmly on my neck until I accepted. Much later, when I exited the board, he felt strongly that I should have stayed.

I called him “my prof” even though I did not attend any of the institutions where he taught. Yet he was my teacher in every matter that demanded the depth, sweep, and context of history. Because he wanted me to join the university system and follow a path similar to his, he began calling me “Professor Olagunju.” He said it playfully, repeatedly, and with affection. I would laugh, and he would insist he would not stop. On his sickbed, we spoke and, all through, in our talks was that special tune, our tone. Nothing suggested that the conversation was the very closing glee, our last. He was determined to survive what ailed him but death and destiny would not let him.

He was my friend, a mentor, and my brother.

In August this year, I was inducted as an honorary Fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Letters. Prof Oyeweso was a key member of the circle of very senior professors who initiated that process and saw it through. But he would not live long enough for me to grow tall enough to thank him properly.

Oyeweso was too alive, too vibrant, to be spoken of in the past tense. Even now, it is difficult, sorely painful and very awkward to describe him as one who was.

But who are we to query the Almighty? The One who gives life knows when to call it back. The final decision on when the final comes is His, and His alone.

He lived well but died too soon. “The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together” — Shakespeare in ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’. Life is so full of the bitter and the sweet. Our friend had both. Now, he has gone to rest; “the labourer’s task is over…Now, the battle day is past.”

May the valiant, luminous soul of Professor Siyan Oyeweso rest in perfect peace.

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