Tribute: For Ayo Bamgbose, Eulogy to the Orisa

Tribute: For Ayo Bamgbose, Eulogy to the Orisa.

Tribute: For Ayo Bamgbose, Eulogy to the Orisa For Ayo Bamgbose, Eulogy to the Orisa By Olu Obafemi For you, It is not only a eulogy but praises in prose chant.

Chants in celebration of the Iroko; For For Ayo Bamgbose, Eulogy to the Orisa By Olu Obafemi For you, It is not only a eulogy but praises in prose chant.

Chants in celebration of the Iroko; For Ayo Bamgbose It is not an elegy, not a mournful lyric Nor refrains of melancholy.

We sing a song of praise For a hero Whose exploits keep us at the shores As we dance To the rhythm of harvest . When Baba Bamgbose turned a nonagenarian, some four years ago, I had written a tribute in his honour in which I regretted that I did not have the fortune of schooling directly at his feet, in a walled classroom. I had said, inter alia: “It grievously defrays from my fortunes that I did not school directly and physically in Professor Emeritus Ayo Bamgbose’s classrooms even for a moment during my school life. But I must quickly add, as this will reflect in this very short tribute for the huge, (in literal and metaphorical terms,) foremost academic linguist in Nigeria, and proponent of language and linguistic scholarship on the African continent with international and global pre-eminence, that the disadvantage made me a special ‘pupil’ at his feet, outside the classroom.” Now, as it turned out, it will never happen again, that this mental colossus will live, from now on, only in our dreams.

MSEApp News is publishing an original rewrite of this tip for readers, based on reporting associated with THISDAY.