Prof Armstrong Matiu Adejo, the Benue State University Historian of Identity, culture and Peace ,is six feet below. He was laid to rest in his Auke community in Apa Local Government Area of Benue State Friday, February 10th, 2023. Prof Adejo’s burial coincided with a time of unspeakable paralysis in Nigeria arising from fuel and currency lock up by power players in the Nigerian succession politics.
Presidential election is due in a matter of weeks and it appears some interests think disorder can stall the elections either because none of the leading candidates is considered okay or stab the candidate of the ruling party who emerged as candidate in spite of many roadblocks.
Another face of the late Historian
The late Prof Adejo died January 19th, 2023 died in controversial circumstances. While it is true he died a few days after surgery, that is the factual side of it which does not include the quality of the hospital where the operation took place, the exertions that preceded the surgery such as having to be taken from Makurdi to Abuja on a horrible road for the surgery to take place and the stresses that comes with chaotic modernisation as is the case across much of Africa. So, the continent continues to lose well trained individuals with delicate capacity for framing the ‘African condition’.
And so Prof Claude Ake dies from an air crash even as he and others could have still been saved; a Bala Jubril or a Chima Ubani perishes in a road accident or a Dele Udoh was shot to death by a policeman in 1983 similar to Christmas Day 2022 shooting to death of Lagos lawyer, Bolanle Raheem.
The combination of factors which killed Prof Adejo is the basis of the interpretation by some assessors that he actually died of heart attack as different from the fact of his condition after a surgical operation. As Intervention reported, this analysis is not a medical opinion but fits into what can be called an informed opinion on the likely cause of the demise of the Historian. In that case, Prof Adejo is merely one of the latest victim of the killer tension associated with an extraordinarily dysfunctional capitalism as Nigeria has been experiencing in the past few years in particular.
His demise has left many mourning. Apart from the family and closest circle of friends and colleagues is Edumoga District, the largest of them to this moment in Idomaland. A retired Headteacher in the area called to narrate the community’s sense of loss, revealing that the late Professor grew up partially in Edumoga. According to his story, the late Adejo followed a relation of his who served as HeadMaster at the now LGEA Primary School, Okpale in lower Edumoga and had many friends from there till his death.
To the family, immediate community and then colleagues would be added the Department of History at the Benue State University, Makurdi; the Emmanuel Secondary School Old Boys Association, (ESSUOBA), the Idoma ethnic arena, the Historical Society of Nigeria, academia in general and informed politics. Many of the second year students at Emmanuel Secondary School, Ugbokolo whom he taught Lamb Tales from Shakespeare, a simplified version of, arguably, the most key of Shakespeare’s plays, will never forget him, given his pedagogic innovations, sometimes using local knowledge to illustrate.
Prof Robert Armstrong, the American Historian of Idoma nationality invested with the traditional title of ‘Odejo’ of Idomaland and buried in Otukpo,
ESSUOBA will be particularly hurt because he is one of the leading old boys with the stature of a professor from the pioneer set or so of the Catholic owned secondary school and, therefore, its ambassador when old boys of the much older Catholic secondary schools in the area are in congregation. these would include Saint Michaels, Aliade, Mount Saint Gabriel Secondary School, Makurdi, Saint Francis Secondary School, Otukpo, Government College, Otukpo, Wesley High School, Otukpo, Holy Rosary College, Adoka and St Annes, Otukpo. It was thus understandable that a senior member of ESSUOBA who contacted Intervention upon Prof Adejo’s death labeled him variously and generously as “our father, mentor, fountain of knowledge, moral compass”, calling his death a huge loss to ESSUOBA again and, indeed, ‘a black Friday’. The last set of the bereaved would be those Adejo taught Literature and History at Emmanuel Secondary School, Ugbokolo between 1977 and 1978 before entering the University of Maiduguri in the Northeast of Nigeria for a BA in History. He later obtained a PhD in the discipline.
Although not a chauvinist, the greatest or one of the greatest losers will be the Idoma nationality. As Prof Adejo advanced in age, a more systematic documentation of Idoma cultural power resources would have pre-occupied him most, being a historian with good training in orality. It would not have been his job alone but all who have expertise in that realm – from Linguistics to Cultural Studies to Philosophy, History, Anthropology, Geography, Theatre Arts, Political Science and Literature or Literary Arts, the master of them all -would have had to be mobilised into it.
Adejo would most likely have headed it because historians of the pre-SAP training are more and more scarce in Nigeria today. And this is more so for an ethnic minority which has a poor record in preserving its cultural signifiers. Idomaland has no organised reckoning with its text producers, the most advanced of whom must be the master lyricist, Joe Akatu, the Chinua Achebe of Idomaland. At Otukpo, it is a set of rather business minded Igbo boys who do not even understand the language who are selling recorded versions of Akatu’s ‘Alime’ music. Yet, Akatu was the richest source of what one can call the undiluted Idoma cosmologies. It is great that Bongos Ikwue has lessened the loss by producing tunes such as ‘Otachikpokpo’, ‘Ellakunogo’ or ‘Ouno’ but Bongos is not a replacement of Akatu or the masquaredes and their chants which are mostly genealogical. Preliminary dialogic encounters with the texts of much of Akatu and Bongos’ songs by this reporter at journalistic as well as academic levels shows the two of them have to be studied together to be able to make a complete statement on the Idoma worldview. in truth, each of the two gives what Jacques Derrida calls ‘Western metaphysics’ a run for their insights on the world. The most surprising thing anyone would find in engaging these text producers is that they are completely relativists but, perhaps, in a disciplined sense of it.
Who has got the resources and the altruism to make a move by pooling resource persons together, even if in memory of this man who has managed to be a sage without ever being in political office. In fact, he managed to encrust himself in a certain mystique.
One of that is how he came to bear ‘Armstrong’ as part of his name or the ‘Matiu’ component of it. Intervention could still not establish conclusively if it has to do with Prof Robert Armstrong, the British academic who did so much works on Idoma History at the University of Ibadan many decades back that the Idoma Kingdom made him a traditional title holder. He thus died with the princely title of ‘Odejo’ and was buried in Otukpo in 1987. It is now a matter of speculation what he would have done if he became a Vice-Chancellor. He did seek to be on two occasions just as he invested in Och’Idomaship stool for which it was the turn of his area.
Save journey, Prof! Fortunately, unlike many of us, you are versatile in the language of the ancestors and can operate in that cosmological radius flawlessly.
