Carleton professor and director of Carleton’s Institute of African Studies, Pius Adesanmi, has been identified among 157 people who died after an Ethiopian Airlines jet, bound for Nairobi, crashed Sunday morning.
Adesanmi was on the plane when it crashed shortly after takeoff near the town of Bishoftu, 62 kilometres southeast of the capital Addis Ababa.
“Pius was a towering figure in African and post-colonial scholarship and his sudden loss is a tragedy,” Benoit-Antoine Bacon, the university’s president and vice-chancellor, said in a press release from the university issued earlier today.
“Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and all those who knew and loved him, and with everyone who suffered loss in the tragic crash in Ethiopia,” Bacon said.
Several of Adesanmi’s students have taken to social media to share their grief over Adesanmi’s passing.
Halima Sogbesan, a Carleton student who worked closely with Adesanmi, said he “made the African studies institute at Carleton home, for me and many African students in Ottawa,” via Twitter.
“We went to his office without setting up appointments. And he took all of us seriously. He wanted to know our dreams and ambitions. He told us we were capable of great things,” Sogbesan said.
David Oladejo, president of the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA), said CUSA extends “its deepest sympathies to the family of Pius Adesanmi,” in a statement made on Facebook.
“I personally love seeing the impacts that Nigerians can have especially in the western world. Reading about some of Professor Adesanmi’s many accomplishments makes the gravity of this loss even more significant,” Oladejo said.
Photo provided
