That Dr. Bene Madunagu has breathed her last has been formally announced. Death brings a lot to a close for most human beings. It does for Dr. Bene but it will take generations before she fizzles out of collective memory.
One, she chose academia to serve motherland. It is in the nature of academics to write. To write is to make claims, the meanings of which could take years to unfold because the meaning of what people write is never present immediately in those writings. An essay or book chapter or Op-ed published today may only become meaningful several years later. That makes writing an investment in immortality. Dr. Bene has made that investment in Biological Sciences but also in the social sciences
Two, she was an activist of the socialist-feminist bent. Although Women in Nigeria (WIN) where that unfolded is now defunct, there is no knowing what some other actors make of that platform and its legacy tomorrow
Three, Dr. Bene had a programmatic commitment via what is called The Girl Child Initiative. Some of the laureates might be somewhere thinking of how best to remember her in their own ways.
Lastly, her students may have a joker up there. but for his students, no one beyond a few might be aware of Ferdinand de Saussure’s world changing disruption of the signifier – signified in Linguistics, the possibility of the ‘linguistic turn’ in social analysis today and the clarity it has brought to the human condition than any other attempts at that. We have no idea of the sort of research in biological sciences Dr. Bene might have taught and whether it is the sort that may be brought up at a later date.
Of course, her marriage gave her enhanced presence. Her husband, the thoroughly irrepressible socialist mathematician, Eddie Madunagu, was as controversial as they come, all of which brushed on Dr. Bene Madunagu in her own independent rowing. The sweetest marital relationship could have its share of storms but the two were an admirable ideological pair within and beyond their base, the University of Calabar in South-southern Nigeria.
A combination of these features that define her suggest she lived fully ahead of the D-day with mortality. It was well!
