Tribute to Professor Funso Aiyejina (1949 – 2024)

By Okejoto Gochua

Professor Funso Aiyejina was my Teacher, mentor and friend. It is so difficult to write about Aiyejina in the past. FA as we all fondly called him was a Poet, Teacher, Mentor and friend to a generation of students at the then University of Ife in the early ‘80s to 1990 Department of Literary Studies (where my path crossed with his) and the University of West Indies where he taught since 1990 till his final curtain call.

A quiet and almost self-effacing iconoclast, he had actually attended an interview for the position of Lecturer in 1980 with his PhD certificate in his jeans back pocket. Thank God for Professor Oyin Ogunba’s fatherly disposition and tolerance of all shades of gray, white and black in the then Department of Literature at Ife which was suffused with so much diverse talents in the teaching staff, from the fiery Marxist Biodun Jeyifo, G.G.Darah, Bayo Williams to our quiet iconoclastic Aiyejina.

I was immediately drawn to the quiet and almost self-effacing person of Funso Aiyejina, he was forever soft spoken and had an uncanny attention to detail, perhaps because he did not look much older than the students he taught, he easily blended with us and quickly identified with those of us whom he took under his wings!

By my final year (1984-1985) session it had become apparent that I had no choice other than to follow him into the realm of Caribbean Literature.

He epitomized the Alter/Native Tradition of the Ife School of Literature- quietly reflective on the nature of writing and the writer as a creative force on elements in his Creative Writing Class including specific and helpful advice to us, his students on the craft of writing, work habits, and discipline.

By the time he arrived at the University of West Indies, he single-handedly raised the creative writing impetus to the level of MFA degree in the Department of Literature there.

In 2007, we reconnected when he visited Nigeria for the summer of that year. And since then he had actually shown so much interest in how I fared in Nigeria! For example, in the summer of 2012 on my way back from a program at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, at the Airport at Raleigh, I purchased the book “It is Just A Film “ by Earl Lovelace -Aiyejina’s life-long Caribbean author -friend and decided to put a call to him from the Raleigh Airport. He was all ears and enquired in his usual way whether I was still interested in Caribbean Literature and how to arrange for yours sincerely to come over to the University of West Indies for a belated PhD which I gently declined. He had a fantastic relationship with the Caribbean, especially Earl Lovelace!

We had so many plans in the pipeline including establishing an annual summer creative writing workshop with the assurance that he would get Baba Odia Ofeimun to partner with him at my budding Institute of Media Studies. All that has become just a dream.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, I woke up on the 3rd of July 2024 with a feverish urge to communicate with him, I fired a WhatsApp message to him thus “Hurricane Beryl doesn’t seem to be headed your way but Granada and Jamaica have been hard hit. Stay safe Prof” at 7.20 am; unknown to me he had passed on quietly on the 1st of July 2024.

How do you say farewell to such a caring Teacher, mentor and friend without something giving way deep inside of you? FA epitomized both the humanist and the AlterNative Tradition of Literature of the Ife -Ibadan School of Literature.

As idealistic as FA was, he would really want us to savour his presence like aged wine, ruminate about his passing without any bitterness in our mourning for him and I intend to keep it so. Farewell FA, adieu Aiyejina!!

*Okejoto Gochua, the Proprietor of Master Builder Institute of Media Studies, Owhrode, Udu LGA of Delta State, Nigeria, wrote the tribute in honour of Emeritus Professor Funso Aiyejina who passed on at 75 on July 2024 in Trinidad.