Immediately I heard the news, I lost it all.

Food, water- everything I had taken in the last 12 hours came pouring out in shocking disbelief. Pius Adesanmi could not have died in the Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed in Addis Ababa. It was not possible that the man who had survived a fatal car crash in July 2018 will be gone in another type of crash in March 2019, less than a month after his birthday.

The day after… I've written so many "eniyan l'aso mi" updates after moments like this. I'd sound like a broken record deploying that trope yet again. So, I am just going to say thank you for making my day memorable yesterday. pic.twitter.com/FBqdt38NuM — Pius Adesanmi (@pius_adesanmi) February 28, 2019

Unfortunately, Ethiopian Airline had confirmed it even before we knew that one of the Canadians counted among the dead was Nigerian-born Pius Adesanmi. All 157 souls abroad the ill-fated Boeing 737 8-Max en route Nairobi died when it crashed in the Ejere area of Addis Ababa.

Accident Bulletin no. 2

Issued on march 10, 2019 at 01:46 PM pic.twitter.com/KFKX6h2mxJ — Ethiopian Airlines (@flyethiopian) March 10, 2019

I got to know Pius Adesanmi shortly after I graduated from school. I had just joined Facebook a year before and hated all the abbreviated words, the horrible, senseless writing and the fake ‘wokeness’ happening there. And one day, in the midst of all the noise, I saw a shared post from a friend and I decided to read.

I cannot remember the exact post now. I think it was the one where he was talking about his daughter helping him water some plants and trying to be generally helpful, but I was immediately drawn by the clear writing, the logical progression of ideas, and the brilliance that shone through such an ordinary writeup. I was drawn.

Just like that, I started reading every article published by Professor Pius Adesanmi on Facebook. When I activated my Twitter account back in 2017, he was one of the first people I sought out and started following.

And I was never disappointed. Not one day did I ever regret following him on social media. Whether he was talking about Nigeria and her politics, or the African continent and her people, or Trump, he made sure he clearly passed his message across.

And his message was full of love for Nigeria and the African continent. For someone like me who experiences the hell of Nigeria every day, I just could not understand it. He was a successful professor in Canada, the director of the Institute of African Studies at the Carleton University and a renowned scholar globally: why was he so bothered about Africa and Nigeria? Why did he care?

But he cared. He did not stop caring when the situation looked hopeless. He did not stop caring when the social media trolls attacked him. In fact, he would attack them back while reiterating his love for the land that birthed him. Nothing and no one could kill that love in him.

I have never met him, never spoken to him one on one nor had any personal interaction with him, but I know it as I know my birth date: Pius Adesanmi was a great man, so great that it feels weird to talk about him in the past. Surely, such great men should live forever.

My heart is too heavy to go on, but I am comforted by the words used in the prayer at every requiem mass and in the Mass for the remembrance of the dead

“For the faithful, life is not ended, just changed”

Dear Professor Pius Adesanmi, I believe you are here among us, just not in the form that we have become accustomed to. Continue to live in power, and may everything you have fought for not die out in vain.

Qwenu! publishes opinions, reflections, and experiences of Africans on contemporary issues. Click here to read articles from Africans at home and in the diaspora. Email submissions to editor@qwenu.com Follow us @qwenu_media