By Soonest Nathaniel
Professor
Isidore Okpewho, the Nigerian literary icon has passed on. He is said to have
died of some undisclosed illness. He was aged 74 years.
 |
| Late Prof. Isidore Okpewho |
The
award-winning novelist, 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.”
Source: Naij.com news 
