Popular Nigerian Professor Dies In South Africa

A renowned Nigerian author and professor, Kole Omotoso, has been reported dead.

Reports obtained by Naija News on Thursday morning revealed that Omotoso died in South Africa, where he had been battling an undisclosed sickness.

Omotoso died age of 80. A family source reportedly confirmed the sad development to PremiumTimes on Wednesday.

This news platform understands that Omotoso is best known for his works of fiction and in South Africa as the “Yebo Gogo man” in adverts for the telecommunications company Vodacom.

The novelist and playwright wrote from a Yoruba perspective and coupled the folklore he learned as a child with his adult studies in Arabic and English.

Omotoso’s major themes included interracial marriage, comic aspects of the Biafran-Nigerian conflict, and the human condition—as exemplified in friendship between the Yoruba and the Igbo and in relationships between children and parents.

Omotoso wrote fiction, drama, and criticism.

His novels include The Edifice (1971), The Combat (1972), Fella’s Choice and Sacrifice (both 1974), The Scales (1976), To Borrow a Wandering Leaf (1978), and Just Before Dawn (1988); his plays The Curse (1976) and Shadows in the Horizon (1977); and his single volume of short stories Miracles and Other Stories (1973; rev. ed. 1978).

From the 1980s, Omotoso took an increasingly public role as an African intellectual; among the many works of nonfiction he contributed are; The Form of the African Novel (1979, reprinted (1986), Season of Migration to the South: Africa’s Crises Reconsidered (1994), and Woza Africa (1997; Come on, Africa!: Music Goes to War).