President Muhammadu Buhari has joined other prominent Nigerians to mourn the death of renowned writer and poet, Professor John Pepper Clark.
Buhari in a statement issued by his spokesperson, Mr. Femi Adesina, paid tribute to one of Nigeria’s finest poets, dramatist and recipient of the Nigerian National Order of Merit Award for literary excellence, whose repertoire of published works depicts the hard work of a great man, devoted to a lifetime of writing, knowledge and promotion of the indigenous culture of the Ijaw nation.
“President Buhari”, the statement said, “takes solace that his body of literary works, which earned him recognition and respect both at home and abroad would continue to inspire upcoming Nigerian writers to pursue literary excellence and flourish in their chosen vocation”.
In a similar statement, Edo State Governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki expressed a deep sense of shock and foreboding over the sad news.
Obaseki described Clark as “a great academic and a celebrated poet, who contributed immensely to Nigeria’s advancement through his numerous works”.
On his own remarks, Delta State Governor, Senator Ifeanyi Okowa, said the literary world had lost an enigma whose works would continue to dominate the contemporary Nigerian society.
Describing his passage as a great loss to the country and the literary world, the Governor extolled the immense contributions of the late writer to the growth and development of literature in Nigeria, Africa and beyond.
The Emeritus Professor of Literature, according to his family, died in the wee hours of yesterday, aged 86.
A scion of the Clark-Fuludu Bekederemo family, who hailed from Kiagbodo town, Burutu Local Government Area of Delta State, the late professor, was the younger brother to elder statesman and Ijaw national leader, Chief Edwin Clark.
Born on December 6, 1933, to an Ijaw father and Urhobo mother, Clark received his early education at the Native Authority School, Okrika (Ofinibenya-Ama), in Burutu Local Government Area (then Western Ijaw) and the prestigious Government College in Ughelli, and his BA degree in English at the University of Ibadan, where he edited various magazines, including the Beacon and The Horn.
Upon graduation from Ibadan in 1960, he worked as an information officer in the Ministry of Information, in the old Western Region of Nigeria, as features editor of the Daily Express, and as a research fellow at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ibadan.
He served for several years as a Professor of English at the University of Lagos, a position from which he retired in 1980. While at the University of Lagos he was co-editor of the literary magazine Black Orpheus.
In 1982, along with his wife Ebun Odutola (a professor and former director of the Centre for Cultural Studies at the University of Lagos), he founded the PEC Repertory Theatre in Lagos.
