Tekena Tamuno Former U.I Vice Chancellor Dies At 83

A former Vice Chancellor of the University of Ibadan, Emeritus Prof. Tekena Tamuno, is dead.

The great intellectual giant and former president of the Nigeria Academy of Letters (NAL) passed on in Ibadan on Saturday afternoon. He was aged 83 years.

Tamuno, who was born in Okrika, Rivers State, was one of Africa’s renowned professors of History and former president of the Nigerian Academy of Letters.

His death came as a shock to friends and colleagues as he was said to have recovered and looking healthy after returning from the United States (U.S.), where he was reportedly treated for prostate cancer last month. He also reportedly danced gleefully in church the Sunday before he passed on.

Reacting to Tamuno’s death, the Secretary of NAL and fellow historian, Prof. Olutayo Charles Adesina, said the Nigerian academic community and the nation had lost “an extremely cerebral historian and foremost scholar of the humanities, who combined the rigour and flexibility needed for a better understanding of his field”.

Prof. Tamuno served as chancellor, Redeemer’s University; chairman of the Presidential Panel on National Security from October 2001 to December 2002 and Panel on Policing Nigeria Project 2002- 2003.

A poet and historian, Prof. Tamuno was a fellow of both the Nigerian Academy of Letters and Rockefeller Foundation and a member of the National Universities Commission.

Source:-The Nation