Adieu, Ayo Bamgbose – Tribune Online

THERE are lives that pass unnoticed and there are lives that illuminate the paths of an age. Ayọ̀rìndé Bámgbóṣé, Nigeria’s first Professor of Linguistics, belonged emphatically to the latter. His death on July 25, 2026 at the age of 94 has deprived Nigeria, Africa and the international scholarly community of one of the greatest minds to have devoted a lifetime to the study of language, culture and education. But while death has claimed the man, it cannot extinguish the enduring light of his scholarship and his academic landmarks. The Roman poet Horace famously wrote: “I have built a monument more lasting than bronze.” Few Nigerian scholars exemplify that immortal boast more convincingly than Ayo Bamgbose. His true monument is neither built of marble nor granite. It is structured in the evergreen and priceless scholarly works that continue to modulate linguistic inquiry across continents, in the generations of scholars that he inspired, and in the renewed confidence with which African languages now occupy their rightful place in intellectual discourse.

Emeritus Professor Bamgbose was among the remarkable constellation of scholars who transformed the University of Ibadan into the intellectual capital of post-independence Africa. At that time when newly independent nations were searching for cultural confidence, he insisted that African languages deserved rigorous scholarship of the highest international standard. His pioneering works — A Grammar of Yoruba, Language and the Nation and Language and Exclusion — provoke enduring questions about language, identity and national development. His contributions extended far beyond the grammar of Yoruba. He demonstrated with remarkable clarity that language lies at the very heart of civilisation. Language preserves memory, shapes…