By Babatunde Jose
“A properly educated mind will not accept crude tyranny; for to accept tyranny will be an act of intellectual self-dispossession. Long after the guns have been silenced, the supersonic boom of ideas and thunderous artillery of thinking will continue to echo.” Prof. Adebayo Williams – TEMPO 1996.
Anjonu onigege; the wizard with the pen: That is Professor Adebayo Williams, a wordsmith of no comparison. The unrivalled and indomitable Tatalo Alamu. The fiery columnist and past master in ‘Guerilla journalism’. A fine essayist and arresting columnist. Protest leader and the dreaded Cobra of the 70s at Great Ife. A man of many parts who in the apogee of his university days would out-drink and out-smoke the dreaded ‘agbako’ under the table and in his days, a rascal per excellence.
Those at the receiving end of his vitriolic pen will not forget him in a hurry. With age Bayo has mellowed down, but his pen is still as acerbic as it was decades ago. In the words of a mischievous old mate: “Having cleaned up his act and set aside all the ‘jagidi jagan’ attitude he acquired in his formative years in Itutaba, Ibadan”, Bayo has evolved into the literary colossus he is today.
He grew up in Ibadan where his late father was a good friend of late Adegoge Adelabu (Penkelemesi), the stormy petrel of Ibadan politics, of the Mabolaje Grand Alliance fame. Like Adelabu whom he grew to admire, Bayo was born a Yoruba of the Yorubas, hence his proficiency in proverbs, anecdotes, and folkloric tales of the ancient. His father hailed from Gbongan in present Osun State, not far from Ife, the cradle of the Yorubas. Bayo was born on the 9th of September 1951 and many of his schoolmates in the primary school would remember him as a prodigious and highly talented boy.
Unfortunately, Bayo had to drop out of school as a result of economic adversity and the vicissitudes of the time and he had to resort to self-education, which in the end paid off handsomely for this prodigious man. Bayo is in a good position to regale us with his autobiography, which is a tale of adventure on its own.
The private student later caught-up with his peers and surpassed many in the academic pursuit, bagging a doctorate and spending time lecturing and getting a professorial chair to the bargain.
Variously described by leading authorities as the greatest essayist to have come out of Africa, Nigeria’s five-star writer and a master of arresting and scintillating prose, Bayo is easily one of Nigeria’s most respected and authoritative public intellectuals.
A polyvalent intellectual and multi-disciplinary scholar, his books and scholarly articles span several fields, namely: Theory of Literature, Political Theory, Theory of Governance and Democratization, Cultural Production, Post-Colonial Theory and Creative Writing.
As a journalist, Professor Williams has served as columnist for several national and international magazines and newspapers.
In 1981/ 82 session Bayo was appointed Honorary Visiting Lecturer, Department of English, University of Sheffield, England.
In 1986, barely three years after being awarded a doctorate degree in ‘Theory of African Literature’, Williams became a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Literature in English, Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.
During the Abacha clamp down on the opposition of which Bayo had become a stalwart, he bolted away from his University of Ife base through the NADECO route and surfaced in England where the University of Birmingham received the genius with automatic alacrity.
Since returning to Nigeria in 2006 after serving as a professor in various universities in America and Europe, Professor Adebayo Williams has served as Chairman, Lagos State Electoral Reform Panel; member Board of Trustees Obafemi Awolowo Institute for Governance and Public Policy and Chairman, Lagos State Gubernatorial Advisory Committee under Governors Babatunde Fashola and Akinwunmi Ambode.
In 1995, Professor Williams was appointed the Director General of Africa Policy Group, a London based Think-tank which addresses issues of governance crucial to Africa. Earlier in 1991 while still teaching at Ife, Williams was made a Director of the USAID-sponsored project on Governance and Democratization in Africa.
In 1997, Professor Williams returned to the Centre of West African Studies, University of Birmingham as Visiting Lecturer and Honorary Research Fellow, a position he held till 2006. He had earlier served in the same department as Leverhulme Fellow between 1988-1990.
In November 1998, Professor Williams became a fellow of African Studies Centre, University of Leiden, Holland and Professor of Liberal Arts, Savannah College of Arts and Design, Georgia, USA. In January 2004, Professor Williams assumed duty as the Amy Freeman Lee Distinguished Chair of Humanities and Fine Arts, University of The Incarnate Word, San Antonio, Texas USA. He has also served as jury/professor at the Ecole Normale Superieure in France.
In the course of a distinguished career spanning almost forty years, Professor Williams has won many laurels in scholarship, journalism, and Creative writing.
Said a friend, Omo Ekun: “He writes like a prophet to the nation. He detests reading or writing on personal controversies. At a hang out at the Commonwealth Secretariat London with Kayode Soyinka, Tunde Fagbenle, and other friends, Fagbenle was forced to ask:” Bayo, jewo, se awon iwin ati ajanaku, lo’n construct awon grammar fun e ni?” Bayo confess, is it the spirits and demons that assist in constructing the grammar you write?
One bullet was reserved for him by Abacha’s hitmen as a result of his underground war cabinet activities against tyranny. He was the brain behind the 1st ever Nigeria Political summit chaired by Pa Adekunle Ajasin at Eko Hotel Lagos. The summit was so successful that Abacha became jittery.”
A day after his piece in NewsWatch magazine, “The Road to Kigali” Abacha gave up the ghost. The writer had become a prophet!
A great satirist, among his published novels include “The Year of The Locust”, “Remains of the Last Emperor” and “Bulletin from Land of The Living Ghosts.”
A famous quote from an essay and tribute to Anthony Enahoro, titled: “An old man in a Hurry”, published in TEMPO in 1996, Bayo wrote: “A properly educated mind will not accept crude tyranny; for to accept tyranny will be an act of intellectual self-dispossession. Long after the guns have been silenced, the supersonic boom of ideas and thunderous artillery of thinking will continue to echo.”
According to Chris Anyokwu, Associate Professor of Literature in the Department of English, University of Lagos (UNILAG) and one of the many he mentored, “Bayo Williams is the best Essayist in Africa.”
An accomplished journalist Mr. Bamidele Temitope Johnson agonized over the dearth of Arts and Literary Review pages in our newspapers. He re-ignited the memory of what one will call Nigeria’s age of enlightenment. Prominent among the literary scholars who dazzled with hot contestation of ideas then was Professor Adebayo Williams, among others.
In his 1994 novel ‘The Remains of the Last Emperor’ Williams created a crazy world, where human life means nothing, where the living cohabits with the dead and the dead with the living; where it is not strange to see a bird-like monster sitting in the middle of the road and pythons mounting a guard of honor. He painted a metaphorical medical ward called “The Ward of the Damned”, where inmates sound more like human rights activists than lunatics with their leader, Oriade a.k.a “Were Pataki”. The country is in the throw of that situation today.
Williams’ messages are clear: Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Another is the futility of absolute power. He also shows that when a people are determined, no tyrant can overpower them. This is inherent in the assertion: “the epoch ends when the slave defeats his master”.
In one of my comments to his column, I wrote inter alia: Your anecdote on the importance and imperative of old ethical order is very instructive of the decadence our society has degenerated into. It is very axiomatic of a society in decline, morally and ethically. All the values and idiosyncrasies that have been evolved to uphold those values have been eroded.
Yet, there are still many good men around, unsung and living incognito. I can cite a good example for you. You are one we all talk about. Despite your dalliance and hobnobbing with the powers that be, you have refused to cash in and take advantage of that association. You have lived your life placidly and unobstructed without any attempt at self-aggrandizement.
We are proud of you and honored to be your friend and associate. We respect your intellectual sagacity and your forthrightness.
There are others like you too, therefore all is not lost. There is an urgent need for moral rebirth and self-restructuring. It is only after that we can face the restructuring of the polity.
Here is wishing a literary genius of our time a happy 70th Birthday.
Babatunde Jose
