Nigeria has lost one of its most distinguished literary scholars and public intellectuals, Professor Biodun Jeyifo, who died on Wednesday, February 11, 2026, at the age of 80.
The death of the Professor Emeritus of African and African American Studies and Comparative Literature was announced by the President of the Nigerian Academy of Letters, Professor Andrew Haruna, and confirmed to AIT by journalist Jahman Anikulapo.
Widely regarded as one of Africa’s foremost literary critics, Jeyifo was internationally respected for his scholarship on African literature, particularly his authoritative studies on Nobel Laureate Professor Wole Soyinka and novelist Chinua Achebe.
Born on January 5, 1946, in Ibadan, Oyo State, he earned a first-class degree in English from the University of Ibadan in 1970, obtained a Master’s degree from the same institution in 1973, and completed his doctorate at New York University in 1975.
He later taught at Cornell University for nearly two decades, where his work significantly shaped African and comparative literary studies globally.
Through influential essays in the 1990s, Jeyifo provided groundbreaking ideological and theoretical interpretations of Chinua Achebe’s works, including Things Fall Apart, expanding critical discourse around postcolonial African literature.
Beyond scholarship, he served as National President of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) from 1980 to 1982, playing a key role in Nigeria’s intellectual and academic labour movements.
Within the Nigerian Academy of Letters, his contributions were described as foundational and transformative.
He was widely seen as a bridge between generations of scholars, linking post-independence intellectual pioneers with emerging voices in contemporary African studies.
His passing marks a profound loss to Nigeria’s academic community and to global literary scholarship.
(Editor: Ada Ononye)
