Ibadan witnessed a moving and ceremonially rich farewell on Wednesday as Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka led members of the National Association of Seadogs widely known as the Pyrates Confraternity in honouring the memory of distinguished scholar and intellectual Biodun Jeyifo.
The burial was held at the Anglican Cemetery of St James the Great Cathedral, drawing family, friends, former students and colleagues from across Nigeria to pay tribute to one of Africa’s most respected literary critics and progressive thinkers.
Jeyifo, a committed Marxist scholar and pioneer president of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU), passed away on February 11, just five weeks after his 80th birthday was celebrated by loved ones and colleagues in Lagos. His contributions to African literary scholarship and social justice activism left an enduring mark on Nigerian intellectual life.
Well before Soyinka’s arrival, Pyrates members had assembled at the cemetery in their distinctive white shirts, black trousers and red regalia, performing their traditional “sailing” ritual — singing, drumming and dancing in honour of their departed brother. When Soyinka arrived, he took his place at the head of a solemn procession toward the graveside, sword raised, as fellow Pyrates accompanied him in confraternity chants, including the familiar refrain: “Another sayle, Jellu sayle / Pyrates are sailing to Tortuga.”
At the graveside, solemnity replaced ceremony as Soyinka and the brotherhood delivered their final tribute. Among those present were Jeyifo’s children — Okunola, Lekan and Ayoka — his grandchildren and close associates. The gathering closed with a farewell anthem: “Pyrates sail again / We shall sail on earth / We shall sail in heaven / Pyrates sail again” — a symbolic send-off honouring Jeyifo’s lifelong membership in the brotherhood.
Founded in 1952 at the University College Ibadan by Soyinka and six others — collectively remembered as the “Magnificent Seven” — the Pyrates Confraternity evolved into the National Association of Seadogs, an organisation dedicated to humanitarian causes, good governance and social justice. In keeping with tradition, Jeyifo received a “Pyratical burial,” a ceremonial farewell in which departed members are honoured as they symbolically “sail on to Elysium.”
Following the burial, family members and colleagues paid a courtesy visit to former Oyo State Governor Rashidi Ladoja, a gesture that spoke to Jeyifo’s deep roots in Ibadan’s cultural and intellectual community.
In leading the rites, Soyinka and the Pyrates Confraternity celebrated Jeyifo as both a faithful brother of the order and a towering voice in African scholarship — a man whose life was inseparable from the pursuit of knowledge, equity and justice.
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