The literary establishment in Nigeria has been thrown into mourning with the death of Professor David Kerr, a literary scholar and former Vice-Chancellor of two different Nigerian universities until recently. Prof Kerr died earlier today, Friday, August 27th, 2021 in Benue State after a brief illness. Up to the time of reporting, Intervention could not ascertain what killed him. A terse announcement from BENSU has confirmed the death, promising more details He celebrated his 70th birthday very recently with a book on him by fellow scholars. Literary scholars and activists have taken note of the passage in criss-crossing messages in circulation about it.
Prof Kerr is among the earliest academics who left the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria to give academic and administrative teeth to the Benue State University, (BENSU) at its take-off stage. He subsequently became the Deputy-Vice-Chancellor, (Academics) to the pioneer VC, returning to the same university as the substantive VC after a stint in the Benue State Government as Commissioner for Education. That makes him the 2nd Vice-Chancellor of BENSU. That happened to be the time that the National Universities Commission, (NUC) declared BENSU as the best run state-owned university in Nigeria.
It was from BENSU he was appointed, again, as 2nd VC of the Catholic owned Veritas University, Abuja but which was still operating from Obehi in Abia State in Southeast of Nigeria. At the time of his death, he was a contract scholar with the Nasarawa State University in Keffi.
The late Prof Kerr is among Nigerian academics who got their education in the United Kingdom, first at the University of Sussex where he got his Masters Degree in 1977-78 and then the University of Stirling in Scotland where he obtained his PhD in English, (Literature) between 1982 and 1984. Aside from being a Fulbright scholar at Bellagio in Italy, he was also at the University of Minnesota in the United State in 1991. He has what is regarded as his major scholarly outing in “Literature and the Modernist Tradition”
Prof Kerr was, until his death one of the assessors of texts submitted for the Chinua Achebe award. He has produced many PhD and Masters Degrees as supervisor, some of whom have been participants of two Festschrifts, published each at his 60th and 70th birthdays.
