A Nigerian Literary Icon died at 74

– Professor Isidore Okpewho has passed on

– The Nigerian literary icon died at the age of 74
– Isidore is said to have died of some undisclosed illness
Isidore Okpewho, one of Nigeria’s foremost scholar of Oral
Literature has died.
The award-winning novelist, reportedly died at the age of 74. He
was a prolific author, co-author and editor of about 14 books,
dozens of articles and a seminal booklet, “A Portrait of the Artist
as a Scholar” .

Prof Okpewho died peacefully at a hospital in Binghamton, a
town in Upstate New York where he had lived and taught since
1991.
His teaching career spanned University of New York at Buffalo
(1974-76), University of Ibadan (1976-90), Harvard University
(1990-91), and State University of New York at Binghamton.
According to Canada-based Nduka Otiono, quoting family
sources, the distinguished Professor at State University of New
York, Binghamton, passed away on September 4, 2016,
surrounded by family members.
Premium Times reports that although he battled illness recently,
the scholar and humanist demonstrated exceptional capacity in
dealing with his challenging health conditions.
Indeed, only two years ago, his last book to which he had long
committed his intellectual resources, Blood on the Tides: The
Ozidi Saga and Oral Epic Narratology, was published by
University of Rochester Press.
Born on November 9, 1941 in Agbor, Delta State, Nigeria,
Okpewho grew up in Asaba, his maternal hometown, where he
attended St. Patrick’s College, Asaba. He proceeded to the
University College, Ibadan, for his university education.
He graduated with a First Class Honours in Classics, and moved
on to launch a glorious career: first in publishing at Longman
Publishers, and then as an academic after obtaining his PhD
from the University of Denver, USA. He crowned his certification
with a D.Litt from University of London.

With his two earliest seminal academic monographs, The Epic in
Africa: Toward a Poetics of the Oral Performance (1979) and
Myth in Africa: A Study of Its Aesthetic and Cultural Relevance
(1983), Okpewho quickly established his reputation as a first-rate
scholar and pioneer of Oral Literature in Africa.
For his distinctive and prolific output he was honoured with a
string of international academic and non-academic awards that
included the Nigerian National Order of Merit (NNOM), in
Humanities for the year 2010.

As a writer noted, “Recognition for Professor Okpewho’s work has
come with some of the most prestigious fellowships in the
humanities: from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars (1982), Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (1982),
Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford
(1988), the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard (1990), National
Humanities Center in North Carolina (1997), and the Simon
Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2003). He was also elected
Folklore Fellow International by the Finnish Academy of the
Sciences in Helsinki (1993).”
Prof Okpewho also served as President of the International
Society for the Oral Literatures of Africa (ISOLA).
For his creative writing work, Okpewho won the 1976 African
Arts Prize for Literature and 1993 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize
Best Book Africa.
His four novels, The Victims, The Last Duty, Tides, and Call me
by my Rightful Name are widely studied in Africa and other parts
of the world, with some of them translated into major world
languages.
He is survived by his wife, Obiageli Okpewho; his children: Ediru,
Ugo, Afigo, and Onome, as well as members of his extended
family.
Funeral arrangements will be announced by the family in the
coming days.
“We will miss his charming presence, warm-heartedness, and wise
guidance,” said a member of the family last night in Binghamton,
New York, adding: “But we are consoled by the great life he lived,
the many lives he touched beyond the nuclear family, and the
remarkable intellectual legacy he left behind.”