I'm comforted by the fact that yours was a life well lived. Your work touched so many hearts in life and continues to do so in death. Your words laced with wit, sarcasm and humour always set fire to my soul. From you I learnt the power of the pen. I learnt to value relationships over name and fame. I learnt that kind words can go a long way, to speak truth to power, and to do the right thing even when nobody else is.
Because you lived Payo, I write and I hope my words bring a spark to the soul of someone else somewhere in the world. I strive to be a better person everyday. Because you lived. I wish you stayed longer for our paths to cross but God knows best.
This will always be a period of deep reflection for me. You are deeply missed, Payo, and forever in my heart.
Rest on <3

You are a direct definition of humanity and vision.
May God accept your spirit.
Rest in peace Prof.

Very rare human
Your work speaks after you .
Rest easy bro

Prof Pius Adesanmi was a brilliant man. An outstandingly brilliant man. Who indeed continually channelled his brilliance to bettering humanity, especially those of the African descent.  We lost a rare gem and a voice of reason. Continue to rest in peace Prof.

The untimely demise of Prof Pius Adesanmi in the Nairobi-bound Ethiopian Airlines flight, Sunday March 10, is singularly grievous for me.
Pius Adesanmi didn't meet me at the University of Ilorin.
Like me, though he studied at the primordial Department of Modern European Languages, before the English and French segments of the department were each granted autonomous status, several years after I had left.
He earned a First Class degree in French, seven years after I left Unilorin and rapidly built a formidable globally acclaimed reputation as as a gifted creative writer, a perspicacious literary scholar, a fearless and prolific public commentator and an authentic Nigerian patriot, over the years.
I got to take more than a passing interest in his endeavours with the realisation that we were coincidentally linked by the fact that he was a highly regarded Okunman who came from the same place, Isanlu, Yagba East, Kogi State, with me.
He found reason to highlight and celebrate the traditional essence of our people in his regular public commentaries. He extolled the pristine serenity of Isanlu, where his own father made a name as a frontline educationist, rising to the position of school principal in the foremost secondary school in our place, St. Kizito's College, among others.
He was an avid connoisseur of fresh natural palmwine who loved the communion of the calabash.
He typically alluded to the inextricable bonds of amity between our people, which harboured no place for religious animosity in any form.
Yagbaland, Okunland, Kogi State and indeed the literary community at home and in diaspora have lost a great mind in his prime.
Nduka Otiono, a writer friend of mine based in Canada visited me in Abuja a few years back. He knew Pius quite well being in the same Nigerian literary cum intellectual community in Canada.
I hosted Nduka to drinks and good music in my place and a few friends came over.
We were in Maitama and Pius, coincidentally, was also in Abuja and Nduka wanted us to meet, being from the same place.
I remember we spoke on phone (Pius and I) and he sounded like a regular guy, away from the bookworm we had come to identify him as.
He was quite delighted to hear my voice as that Egbon who didn't grow up in our place but has been altruistic enough to find employment for some of our younger fellas at home and impacted in his own little way on the community.
He couldn't join us though because he had an appointment in Gwarimpa, another district in Abuja...
That was the closest we came to meeting each other.
It's bad enough to lose a compatriot, it is more stinging if the victim is so, so near home...
Painful, but we can't question God.
Rest in peace, Pius.
* Tunde Olusunle