Obituary

In the early rainy season of 1975, a battered Volkswagen Beetle carrying two young academics crossed the Togo-Ghana border. The car’s owner, a thirty-year-old lecturer at the University of Ìbàdàn named Biodun Jéyǐfò, had embarked on what he would later call a “special mission”—a journey from Ìbàdàn to Accra to persuade Wọlé Ṣóyínká to end […]

By Sọlá Adéyẹmí (University of East Anglia, UK) There are scholars whose passing feels like the quiet extinguishing of a star; and there are others whose departure alters the very atmosphere of intellectual life. Bíọ́dún Jéyǐfó belonged firmly to the latter category. His death at the age of eighty is not simply the loss of […]

In the evening of 12 September 2023, social media was awash with what was thought to be a wild rumor. Afrobeats star, Ilerioluwa Promise Aloba was claimed to have died. Within hours, it went quickly from rumor to fact: Mohbad was dead. Before his demise at 27, he was most popular for his  smash hit, […]

It appears that the news is true, that the writer-director, author of Burma Boy, Biyi Bandélé, has passed. This is a heavy sentence to type because I knew him. Harder to refer to him in the past tense; we still talked on the phone over a week ago, planning to meet in Lagos whenever he […]

by Tade Ipadeola When news broke late on 22nd April 2022, that Ọba Ọláyíwọlá Adéyẹmí III, the Aláàfin of Ọ̀yọ́, had joined his ancestors at the ripe old age of 83, there was a sense in the entire Yorùbá speaking world that a truly regnant king had departed the realm.  Ọba Adéyẹmí was born on […]

Siwo siwo siwo Siwooooooooooooooo He was Nigeria’s closest instance of the Renaissance Man: musician, sculptor, inventor, sportsman, architect, scholar, mythmaker, lay philosopher, folklorist, and culture ambassador/impresario. A true Jack of many trades who strove so hard to be master of all, he was a man of  many capabilities , with a voice that was admirably […]