Remi Ladigbolu/
Since his tragic passing on March 10 in the ill-fated Ethiopian Airlines flight en route to Nairobi, Kenya, many have reflected on Professor Pius Adesanmi’s final column in the Nigerian Tribune. That column, widely seen as a reflection of his premonition of death, offered a glimpse into how he wished to be remembered.
For the record, Adesanmi—a Nigerian-Canadian professor at Carleton University in Ontario—was the author of the critically acclaimed essay collection, You’re Not a Country, Africa (2011), which won the inaugural Penguin Prize for African Writing in the nonfiction category.
He began his newspaper column, aptly titled Injury Time, after surviving a near-fatal car accident in Nigeria in July 2018. That brush with death seemed to deepen his awareness of mortality and the urgency of his mission.
The most quoted passage from his final column, published just a day before his death, reads with haunting clarity:
“Sadly, I think our people have been psychologically defeated and have come to accept and love these things about Nigeria. They turn on whoever tries to awaken them. Nigeria’s irresponsible rulers have us where they want us. 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 dig 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.”
Adesanmi often seemed like a man racing against time, determined to complete his earthly tasks. His writings, lectures, and personal interactions revealed a prophetic awareness of his destiny.
In a 2009 article, Adesanmi recounted how his paternal grandmother tirelessly sought to free him from the perceived curse of Abiku—a child fated to die young. He wrote:
“My dad passed in 2007, but my paternal grandmother is still alive and kicking. We call her Mama Isanlu, the first person I go to see as soon as I arrive in the village. After all these years, Mama Isanlu still doesn’t trust her Abiku grandson completely. You get a sense she feels she cannot afford to sleep with both eyes closed as far as my case is concerned, lest I pull a fast one on everybody and return to the great beyond—as is the wont of my ilk.”
After falling on a body of snow in his compound and hurting himself badly in January 2017, Adesanmi poignantly expressed a deep realisation of his imminent death in an email to Mitterand Okorie, one of his mentees and a doctoral fellow at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa:
“I’d be lying if I said I haven’t found your lack of concern for my health painful. It is almost unbelievable. I’ve been battling this horrible knee injury since Boxing Day. It has kept me out of circulation for long periods of time. Not a single phone call. Not a single email or text to even ask how I am doing. The period of my recent long silence due to pain from the knee, everybody close to me was worried. I received calls, texts, emails, etc. Not a whimper from you.
“I am at an age now where I should be confident that should anything happen to me and I quit this realm eternally, someone like you would go out of your way to find Tise (referencing his daughter) and worry about her welfare.”
These reflections were not mere musings. They seemed to echo his inner certainty that his time was limited.
Perhaps the most chilling testament to his prescience came during a 2013 workshop, where participants were asked to compose their epitaphs. Adesanmi reportedly wrote:
“Here lies Pius Adesanmi, who tried as much as he could to put his talent in the service of humanity and flew away home one bright morning when his work was over.”
On the morning of March 10, Adesanmi posted a cryptic reflection on Facebook, quoting Psalm 139: “If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost part of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.”
Hours later, at 47, Adesanmi boarded Ethiopian Airlines Flight ET 302 for his final journey.
Chuma Nwokolo, who had encouraged Adesanmi to compose that epitaph years earlier, honoured him in a tribute:
“Beyond his indelible place in the hearts of family, his greatest life was lived on record, with an industry and perspicacity that a flaming jetliner cannot efface.”
Adesanmi’s legacy endures, a testament to a life lived with passion, purpose, and an unyielding commitment to humanity.
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