By Farooq Kperogi
I woke up today to a distressing message from Professor Toyin Falola informing a group of us that Obododimma Oha, a well-regarded University of Ibadan professor of stylistics and cultural semiotics, had died. I have been devastated since.
He would have turned 62 in August.
I became acquainted with Professor Oha more than 15 years ago through the USA-Africa Dialogue Series, the listserv Professor Falola founded and moderates where African academics on the continent and in the diaspora converge to converse.
After reading several pieces I posted on the Dialogue Series, Professor Oha reached out to me privately. That was how our friendship began.
We later became Facebook friends and interacted here often. He regularly commented on my updates and columns, and I occasionally did the same when he posted on either of his two Facebook pages.
At one point, after I published a February 16, 2013 column titled “Insults Africans and African Americans Hurl at Each Other,” he called me a “kindred spirit,” and we discussed collaborating on a project on the vocabularies of vituperation in Nigeria, an area he had been exploring since 1999. Sadly, we never got around to doing it.
He graciously wrote a blurb for my 2015 book on comparative English usage in Nigeria, the United States and the UK and was remarkably generous in his praise for it.
Professor Oha was a true connoisseur of the written word, a consummate prose stylist and, above all, a fine human being.
At some point I noticed that he had disappeared from Facebook, but I never followed up because I assumed he was simply immersed in a new project. In retrospect, that was an error. I should have checked on him. I have learned a lesson from this.
Professor Oha was brilliant, fearless, fair-minded, considerate and classy. He was also unfailingly even-tempered even when he was impassioned in his engagements. He will be sorely missed. May his soul rest in peace.
