Famend Literary Critic Biodun Jeyifo Dies At 80
Famend literary critic, public mental and second President of the Educational Employees Union of Universities (ASUU), Prof. Biodun Jeyifo, has died on the age of 80.
Though particulars surrounding his demise had been nonetheless sketchy at press time, the President of the Nigerian Academy of Letters, Prof. Andrew Haruna, and one in all his former college students at Obafemi Awolowo College (OAU), Ile-Ife, Prof. Wunmi Raji, confirmed that he handed away in Ibadan on February 11.
Haruna described Jeyifo—fondly often called “BJ”—as a distinguished scholar who had a exceptional tutorial profession on the then College of Ife earlier than later holding twin appointments at Cornell and Harvard Universities.
A global occasion had been held in his honour on the MUSON Centre on January 5, 2026, to mark his eightieth birthday, celebrating his immense contributions to literary criticism and African mental thought.
Raji recalled Jeyifo’s management in ASUU, noting that he took the union to “revolutionary heights” and vigorously championed the reason for college staff throughout his tenure.
Efforts to acquire a response from the present ASUU President, Prof. Chris Piwuna, had been unsuccessful as of the time of submitting this report.
Born on January 5, 1946, Jeyifo was a Nigerian tutorial, critic, cultural theorist and specialist in world Anglophone literature and tradition. He gained prominence in African and international tutorial circles for his incisive analyses of capitalist modernity and its social and cultural crises.
His revealed works embrace The Truthful Lie: Essays in a Sociology of African Drama (1985); Wole Soyinka: Politics, Poetics, and Postcolonialism (2004); Issues Fall Aside, Issues Fall Collectively (2010); Towards the Predators’ Republic: Political and Cultural Journalism, 2007–2013 (2016); and Apostrophes: To Friendship, Socialism and Democracy (2021).
Jeyifo’s mental depth and affect earned him comparisons with international postcolonial theorists. It has been mentioned of him that “no different scholar, other than Edward Mentioned, Gayatri Spivak and Homi Bhabha, is extra attentive to the radically dispersed accents or strands of considering the post-colonial the way in which BJ has accomplished.”
His demise marks the top of an period in Nigerian and African literary scholarship.
By Friday Olokor
Times Nigeria