Idowu Farai: Tribute to My Teacher
By: Deji Yesufu
Prof. Idowu P. Farai died yesterday, 18th April 2025. He was seventy years old and had only recently retired from the services of the University of Ibadan, where he had been a teacher at the Department of Physics for a long time. Farai was a giant of a man, who encapsulated the phrase “gentle giant” in its truest form. He was easygoing, and in the little time I observed him, I never saw him bring the full weight of his powers on anyone. If he ever did, such an individual would be dust. Farai encapsulated meekness in its true sense. I write this tribute to honour a man who I observed to be truly committed to university education, with the hope that the system he left behind might take to some of the principles that people like him lived by. I also write this tribute for the family to take comfort in the fact that they had the honour of having a father who truly served the system he worked within.
Prof. Farai taught me between 2011 and 2012 when I came to the University of Ibadan to do a Masters Degree in Radiation Physics. I enjoyed Prof.’s classes thoroughly. He had a masterful command of the subject he taught. He taught me Statistics, and I used to wonder how a Physics teacher had such a masterful command of a subject that ought to belong to the Mathematics department. That is a testament to Farai’s versatility. The best part of Prof.’s classes was, however, not the subject he taught but some of the stories he shared with us as side comments as he taught his topics. It has been some thirteen years since I had those classes and I remember those remarks vividly to date.
One day, one of my classmates, a lady, one of those “SU” types – wrapped up in a head-tie and wearing no earrings, got into a conversation with Prof in the class. I think Prof. had asked her a question based on the topic being discussed, and she was not forthcoming with an answer which was quite an obvious one – if one had really been following the class. Then Prof. Farai asked the lady where she was at the weekend that just ended. She said she had gone to Redeemed Camp. Farai then pointed at the large Physics textbook she was carrying and said “…if the authors of that book had been spending all their time in prayer camps, they would never have had the wisdom to pen the textbooks you and I are using today…” That was vintage Farai. Those of us who had cut our niche in being anti-Pentecostal knew that there was something in Prof. that we could identify with.
On another occasion, Prof. Farai explained to the class the reason why he, as head of the department of Physics at that time, had been quite particular about giving northern students admission to read Physics at the University of Ibadan. He said that universities all around Nigeria are losing their universal trait. He said that the idea behind a university is that an environment of intellectual persons could be built, where ideas are both taught and developed. He explained that no matter how advanced western Nigeria was, we still need to know something of what our brothers in Northern Nigeria are learning. He then mentioned that the reason why Professors go on sabbatical is so they can go to other environments and share the ideas they have developed in their fields of study, while they learn from their colleagues there. That this is why we have student exchange programs, and the reason why teachers should be encouraged to come from overseas to teach in Nigeria, while our own teachers go abroad. He then warned that the universality of the universities is being eroded when universities become ethnic or religious; or when people begin to clamor that the person who should lead a university must come from a certain part of the country. He told us in class that few northerners apply to Physics, and that he almost always gives them the opportunity to come and study in UI.
The last anecdote on Farai I remember was when he taught us a course on ionization radiation. We had learnt from previous studies at the department that radiation combines with water molecules in the body to create ions that are deleterious to body cells. Farai then showed us in this course that there are two types of radiation: those that are ionizing and those that are not. Then he laid down the bombshell: “… the radiation that emits from mobile phone masts is not ionizing radiation…” And the class went agog. He allowed us to settle down from our noise and told us that people always argue with him over the subject. He was recently on a radio broadcast, and after he had made a similar remark, someone called in and gave him this long lecture that his credentials as a Prof. should be questioned. That there are many cases of mobile phones causing explosions with generators; that there have been proven cases of cancers from MTN masts; etc. Prof. replied that these things were possible, but that within the realm of what they have learnt in academia, at least up till that time, radiation from telecommunication masts is not ionizing and they do not cause cancers.
I would see Prof. Farai from time to time when we were still attending the Chapel of the Resurrection. When he made the remark to the lady in my class, l had thought he was an irreligious man. But that is untrue. Farai was a faithful churchman. He is always in church, listening to the sermons, and he was also involved in a couple of church societies. His wife, Mrs. Farai, was with the children’s department of the Chapel. I had taught Prof. Farai’s youngest daughter, Tosin, at the Educational Advancement Center, Bodija, Ibadan. I taught her Physics there. I also worked with Taiwo, Prof’s second daughter, at the Chapel’s children’s church department. I would say that I know the family a little. Prof. Farai and my father, Disu Adeyemi Yesufu, were colleagues at the University of Ibadan in the early 1980s, before my dad left UI and headed to Ahmadu Bello University to work with their newly instituted radiation unit there. In 2019, when my dad returned to Nigeria from the United States of America to live out his retirement, we visited Prof. Farai at his office at the University of Ibadan. It was fun watching the two old men reminisce about the good old days.
Obafemi Awolowo, while commenting on the demise of his son Segun, which occurred in 1963 in a ghastly motor accident, in his book: “My March Through Prison”, said that his greatest consolation was that the dead are not really dead. They have only simply gone from one state to another. There is a sense that they are still with us. People do not speak ill of the dead because you and I will one day die and we will not like to watch people speak ill of us – especially since we no longer possess the opportunity to give a response. I don’t believe in that theory. I think that if people do evil when they die, you should remind the world that they did evil. At the same time, there is no point raking out all the dirty linens of a dead man – we all have ours, and we wish that people will be considerate enough to cover them when we are gone. Prof. Idowu Farai was a human being, who obviously had his own flaws. I however would wish to remember him as the man who taught me Statistics and Radiation Physics at my last attempt to get a university education.
Sleep well, Prof.
Deji Yesufu is the pastor of Providence Reformed Baptist Church Ibadan. He is the author of HUMANITY and VICTOR BANJO. He can be reached via [email protected]
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