Francis Abiola Irele was a Nigerian academic best known as the doyen of Africanist literary scholars worldwide.
11 Facts About Abiola Irele
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Abiola Irele was Provost at Kwara State University, founded in 2009 in Ilorin, Nigeria.
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Abiola Irele was born in Igbo-Ora, Nigeria, and moved to Enugu very early in his life.
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Abiola Irele's father is from Uokha while his mother is from Ora both in Owan area of Edo State.
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In 1943, after a fight between his parents, Abiola Irele returned with his mother to Ora, where he picked up and developed a fluency in the Ora language over the course of a year.
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Abiola Irele was editor of Black Orpheus magazine, from 1968 until 1975.
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Abiola Irele held teaching positions at the University of Ife, and in 1975 at the University of Ibadan, where he was Chair of Languages.
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Abiola Irele was Provost at Kwara State University, founded in 2009, in Ilorin, Nigeria.
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Abiola Irele begins by rejecting the notion of ideological difference between anglophone and francophone Africa.
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Abiola Irele aims to root African progress in the present and not in a romanticized past.
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Abiola Irele died at the age of 81 on 2 July 2017 in a US hospital.