Nigeria, Jan. 4 -- Tomorrow in Lagos, scholars and intellectual expeditioners will gather to honour and celebrate a most unique and outstanding Nigerian intellectual. Professor Biodun Jeyifo, easily one of Nigeria's most outstanding humanities intellectuals, turns 80 tomorrow. Jeyifo, fondly called BJ by his colleagues and students alike, is concurrently Emeritus Professor of English and African Literature at Cornell University and African and African American Studies at Harvard University. The roll call of his former students, both in Nigeria and in the best universities in virtually every continent, reads like a telephone book, an A-list of successful people in diverse fields in Nigeria, and especially the United States and Europe.

But...