The shocking news of the passing of Professor Pius Adesanmi, at a time we least expected it and in a manner we would never have contemplated, has broken the spirits of all who knew him at a personal level but also those who only met him in the virtual world through his writings, public speeches, and online mentoring programmes.
When I rang Cardinal John Onaiyekan, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Abuja, last Sunday evening to break the sad news to him, I couldn’t get across to him. But in a matter of minutes he called back saying he was preparing his homily for the opening Mass of the Catholic Bishops Conference holding in Abuja and didn’t bother to look at his phone.
As I broke the news to him, the Cardinal protested: “Noooooooo! Pius should not be dying like this.” His spirit was dampened.
Onaiyekan was Pius’ father’s vice principal at St. Kizito’s College Isanlu in the late 60s after his priestly ordination. He knew the entire Adesanmi family and was always a welcomed visitor to their Isanlu home.
At this point, the Cardinal’s thoughts ran to Pius’ ageing mother, his wife and daughter and the entire Isanlu town where Pius was revered as a ‘little god’ as a result of his philanthropy.
I was broken. I was sobbing. I couldn’t contain the thought that Pius was no more.
Rev. Professor Anthony Akinwale, O.P., vice chancellor of Dominican University Ibadan, also touched by Pius’ demise, wrote on my Facebook page saying he thought about the Cardinal and me when the news first broke out.
I first met Professor Adesanmi in January 2012 through a thrilling article he posted on his Facebook page titled, ‘A Kukah presidency? Desperate thots from the precipice of despair.’ In this piece, Adesanmi was passionately making a case why we should draft Bishop Kukah, who had just been appointed to Sokoto a few months earlier, to run for the presidency.
Adesanmi began on a note of concern for the future of Nigeria after what he considered to be the electoral tragedy of 2011. This, he said, prompted him and a friend to start thinking seriously about 2015 and how progressive minds can rally round and garner support for a credible presidential candidate.
He admitted that he had drawn up a list of some credible people with his friend, but was glad he never went public with those names because, as he said, a name appears publicly credible today in Nigeria and tomorrow it’s dragged in the mud.
Adesanmi then said: “But I’ve been thinking a lot about Bishop Mathew Hassan Kukah lately. There is precedence. Reverend Father Moses Adasu was Governor of Benue State in 1992-1993 and he said he was in politics to ‘baptize politics and make it pure.’ Maybe it is Bishop Kukah’s turn to do the same in 2015? Can we draft him? Can we make a case? Yes, I am flying a kite. I am doing it because I am desperate. I am doing it because I am close to despair now about Nigeria and I don’t know if I have the strength to keep encouraging the army of the defeated who inbox me everyday asking if there is reason to keep hoping.”
Being a Catholic, Adesanmi knew the canonical rule prohibiting Catholic clergy from taking civil offices that required the exercise of political power, but he found a way to rationalise his Kukah proposal. This piece formed the foundation for my tribute to Kukah a few months later in 2012 when he turned sixty.
Four years later, Adesanmi wrote another article criticising Kukah for a view he had expressed about Nigeria’s political leadership and he started his piece with this line: “Father Emmanuel, when next you see our mutual friend Bishop Kukah, tell him…”
Of course, Adesanmi knew Kukah personally, but he decided on this occasion that I would be his messenger, which I happily accepted. I didn’t have to wait to see Kukah to tell him what Adesanmi asked me to tell him. I rang him and even sent the article to him. Kukah had his reservations about the article, but didn’t flag Adesanmi’s passion for a better Nigeria. That was Pius. He knew when to commend and when to criticise, and whenever he did both, he did so with grace, candour and humour.
One of my memorable meetings with Pius was in July 2016. He phoned to say that he would be in Abuja that month and wanted to come and pay homage to Fada Onaiyekan, as he fondly called the Cardinal. I was Onaiyekan’s secretary at the time. I told the Cardinal and he looked forward to reconnecting with Pius again.
Although Pius’ planned visit coincided with the time for our annual priests retreat, which was strictly regimented, the Cardinal insisted that we should both take a break from the retreat venue and drive back home to receive Pius instead of asking him to find his way to the retreat venue.
It was a pleasant re-union between the Cardinal and the Professor with bursts of boisterous laughter intermittently breaking into into their lively conversation.
In his usual lingo, Pius kept calling me “Fada” and not as the English people would pronounce “Father.” He always carried his Nigerian-ness with him wherever he went.
On this visit, Pius came with his bosom friend Olusegun Adeniyi, a former presidential spokesman and Chairman of Thisday Board of Editors. When the Cardinal tried to introduce me to Adeniyi, Pius laughed heartily and told Fada Onaiyekan that I am Adeniyi’s boy. “I am Father Emmanuel’s editor” Adeniyi quickly interjected.
The first article I published in Thisday Newspaper in December 2011 was made possible by Adeniyi and since then he saw to the publication of about a hundred opinion articles that I published in Thisday between 2012 and 2017.
Adesanmi and Adeniyi were like twins. When Pius set up the African Doctoral Lounge in March 2017, he added me to the group three weeks later, although I had not even contemplated starting graduate studies at the time. He felt the need to mentor me and was particularly interested in my future.
At different times, he kept asking me when Cardinal Onaiyekan would release me for studies and suggested that I should consider applying to Carleton as soon as that was possible. He was always warm and friendly whenever we had a conversation, with his good-natured banter and boisterous laughter. We all had respect for Adesanmi, not just because he was a Catholic but also because of the unquantifiable gifts of mind and heart that God had bestowed on him and the manner in which he went about sharing those gifts with others.
It was as though Pius knew he wouldn’t be staying long with us here and so he set out in haste to pass on those gifts as much as he could to as much people as he could.
No one can doubt his unflagging zeal for Nigeria, for Africa, for the black race. He was a man whose prodigious intellect constantly reminded me of the biblical parable of the talents about how we should put all our God-given gifts and talents at the service of others.
All of us who knew Pius have our own personal stories to tell about this great but simple man and about his many virtues: his magnanimity, his goodness, his generosity of heart and spirit. He was that larger than life father, brother, scholar, teacher, administrator, friend, mentor, writer, traveller – all rolled
into one, and yet he never allowed any of these aspects of his life to suffer neglect. He was a completely integrated being, traversing the worlds of writing, public speaking, social media engagement, nation building, and managing his family as if he had 72 hours in one day while we all have 24 hours.
He had time for almost everyone in spite of the breadth of his daily schedule; like mother hen he had enough space under his wings to take as many intellectual chicks as he could.
He was a citizen of the world, a professor of professors, a teacher of teachers, and a mentor of mentors. I cannot quantify the huge cost of the loss occasioned by his passing.
Last Sunday night shortly after I had spoken with Cardinal Onaiyekan, Kukah called to say he had heard the tragic news and went on to recount what Pius wrote in his last Saturday’s article in the Nigerian Tribune titled ‘An Archaeology of Nigeria’, which has turned out to be his last will and testament.
In that piece, Pius expressed his sadness over the imperviousness of Nigerians to the lessons of their own trouble history and said he had lost hope for change.
In the very last paragraph of the article, Pius said: “I write basically these days for the purposes of archaeology. A thousand years from now, archaeologists would be interested in how some people called Nigerians lived in the 20th and 21st centuries. If they did and excavate, I am hoping that fragments of my writing survive to point them to the fact that not all of them accepted to live as slaves of the most irresponsible rulers of their era.”
These were his parting words to us who are alive, to continue the struggle for a better Nigeria. A few hours before the flight that took his life, he curiously posted a Bible passage from Psalm 139:9-10, in which he expressed his envelopment in God’s “right hand” even if he were to find himself “in the uttermost parts of the sea.”
Unlike the Boeing 737 Max 8 operated by Lion Air that crashed into the Java Sea in October 2018 killing 189 people, the Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 Max 8 that took Pius’ life violently crashed on land and created a huge crater, the size of a basketball field. Even there, “your right hand shall hold me,” Pius wrote to God reminding him of the promise contained in his word.
This is our final consolation: that Pius is safely enfolded in God’s tender arms. His passing should inspire us to live our lives in the service of others.
In so short a lifespan, he touched millions of lives with his infectious goodness, which tells us that although a long life is good, a good life is long enough.
May Pius’ soul now find rest in God. Amen.
– Omokugbo Ojeifo
