The news of the passing away of Pius Adesanmi in the recent Boeing 737 Max 8 disaster on the Ethiopian Flight ET302 was a very sad event and too difficult to digest. It is such a tragic incidence beyond what anyone can truly find the right words to express the terrible feeling of the irreparable loss within the soul of everyone that had the fortune of crossing the prodigious writing-path or witnessing the array of intellectual talents on display by Pius Adesanmi.
Pius Adesanmi before this tragic event was a professor in the Department of English Language and Literature and the Institute of African Studies at Carleton University in Canada. The school’s president and vice-chancellor, Benoit-Antoine Bacon, described Pius as a “towering figure in African and post-colonial scholarship.”
By our limited human considerations and understanding, Pius is too young a life and too promising a talent to be taken away in such a heart rending manner. But then such is the inscrutable way of providence.
What remains for those of us who witnessed this radiant star as it traversed the continent of Africa is to continue to keep him alive by emulating his examples and to cherish the memories of his indefatigable effort, his wholehearted dedication and his unparalleled devotion to the liberation of fellow Africans.
Despite the sadness one feels about the grievous and sudden loss, it still gladdens the soul that Pius died in the service of a cause he believed in and for this selfless engagement to set fellow Africans free, he made the ultimate sacrifice by giving his last breath on his last trip to another conference on African issue in Kenya.
May this beautiful and loving soul, that worked tirelessly and unceasingly for the liberation of the minds of fellow Africans from mental and spiritual slavery until death abruptly snatched him away from us, rest in peace.
SAM ABBD ISRAEL
11 March 2019
SAM ABBD ISRAEL 