The Story of the Villager in the City : Notes Towards an Idea of Village as Mindset 1
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Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Apr 20, 2021, 6:14:37 AM4/20/21
to usaafricadialogue, Yoruba Affairs
The Story of the Villager in the City
Notes Towards an Idea of Village as Mindset
1
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
I once declared that all Nigerian universities, in the context of the global academic system, are equivalent to a single village school.
I made this declaration in response to accusations against me on the alumni Facebook group of my former department in a Nigerian university where I had been a student and lecturer.
A lecturer in that department argued that I was supporting a drive to officially investigate allegations of sexual predation by some staff of that department against students of the department because of disaffection between myself and persons in the department that had led to my leaving the department to continue my graduate studies in England after my BA and MA at the university.
My response was that one does not take the quarrels of the village to the city. That, in the context of my exposure to the heart of the global academic system represented by English universities, moving from Nigerian academia to the English academy was like moving from the village to the city. The politics of the village one had left behind faded into insignificance. At best, one felt sad that one's compatriots engaged in issues detrimental to their own standing in the global knowledge space, since only unity, not division, is the hope of Black people globally in the face of the huge disadvantages stacked against them, disadvantages that become clearer when one is directly faced by the massive gap between much of the West and a country like Nigeria.
Was my response fair? I have asked myself, after the heat of the argument had worn off. What of those great teachers I had at the university of Benin, scholars whose dedicated teaching underlies whatever scholarly skills I have as well as being central to whatever knowledge I have, even facilitating my transfer of critical skills from the study of literature to the visual arts?
I did state, in that argument, that a village school can be a very good school, with excellent teachers, and still be a village school.
I made this declaration in response to accusations against me on the alumni Facebook group of my former department in a Nigerian university where I had been a student and lecturer.
A lecturer in that department argued that I was supporting a drive to officially investigate allegations of sexual predation by some staff of that department against students of the department because of disaffection between myself and persons in the department that had led to my leaving the department to continue my graduate studies in England after my BA and MA at the university.
My response was that one does not take the quarrels of the village to the city. That, in the context of my exposure to the heart of the global academic system represented by English universities, moving from Nigerian academia to the English academy was like moving from the village to the city. The politics of the village one had left behind faded into insignificance. At best, one felt sad that one's compatriots engaged in issues detrimental to their own standing in the global knowledge space, since only unity, not division, is the hope of Black people globally in the face of the huge disadvantages stacked against them, disadvantages that become clearer when one is directly faced by the massive gap between much of the West and a country like Nigeria.
Was my response fair? I have asked myself, after the heat of the argument had worn off. What of those great teachers I had at the university of Benin, scholars whose dedicated teaching underlies whatever scholarly skills I have as well as being central to whatever knowledge I have, even facilitating my transfer of critical skills from the study of literature to the visual arts?
I did state, in that argument, that a village school can be a very good school, with excellent teachers, and still be a village school.
To Be Continued
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Apr 20, 2021, 6:18:55 AM4/20/21
to usaafricadialogue, Yoruba Affairs
The Story of the Villager in the City
Notes Towards an Idea of Village as Mindset
2
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Why am I writing this at this time?
I am writing it because I feel guilty about the manner in which I used the example of one of my stellar teachers, Odun Balogun, in illustrating the point I was making about Nigerian universities.
To further validate my point in the argument discussed in part 1 of this essay sequence, I called Balogun's attention by tagging him in the discussion. Balogun had long left to take up an academic position in the US where he had thrived, publishing both books of literary criticism and short stories, in the spirit of the multi-creative thinker and imaginative worker that he is.
I am writing it because I feel guilty about the manner in which I used the example of one of my stellar teachers, Odun Balogun, in illustrating the point I was making about Nigerian universities.
To further validate my point in the argument discussed in part 1 of this essay sequence, I called Balogun's attention by tagging him in the discussion. Balogun had long left to take up an academic position in the US where he had thrived, publishing both books of literary criticism and short stories, in the spirit of the multi-creative thinker and imaginative worker that he is.
I was calling him to bear witness to my claims, as exemplified by the course he diligently taught us on literary theory in the final year of my BA.
Someone took me to mean that I was describing Balogun as a bad teacher. I struggled to argue that I was stating that Balogun was hampered by the resources available to him.
Balogun taught us at a time when the Structural Adjustment Program and the devaluation of Nigeria's currency had commenced the destruction of the international purchasing power of the naira.
That meant we were not able to access current texts on theory, being unable to access books from the West, the centre of theoretical discourse in the global academic system, and even more so, in those days before the drive towards epistemic decolonization.
Balogun taught us at a time when the Structural Adjustment Program and the devaluation of Nigeria's currency had commenced the destruction of the international purchasing power of the naira.
That meant we were not able to access current texts on theory, being unable to access books from the West, the centre of theoretical discourse in the global academic system, and even more so, in those days before the drive towards epistemic decolonization.
Even then, Balogun made the most of what was available, from the ancient Greeks to the present, including an introduction to African-American theory.
The quality of his teaching, the pristine quality of his integrity, being a man immersed in his calling as an educator of youth and an adept in the rarefied world of scholarship, was one of my windows into the glory and nobility of scholarship and academic teaching, leading me in that direction at the beginning of my scholarly career.
You could disagree in an exam with Balogun's interpretation of a poem and still get a high grade in that exam, as was my experience.
I am haunted by the sense that I did not properly contextualize my reference to Odun Balogun in my description of the challenges of the Nigerian university system.
I also needed to properly credit my lecturers at the University of Benin, people whose teaching is central to whatever scholarly skills I have, strategic to the core of my knowledge base and to what it means to be an educator, people who doubled as teachers, scholars and unpaid guidance counselors in an environment where no one else existed to play that counselling role.
They did all this in a time when academic incomes had fallen to their lowest point, academics having had to resort to such strategies as owning meat shops, barbing salons, provision stalls and selling shoes, as had been the case at the University of Benin well before academics fortunes began to be improved after repeated ASUU struggles, a time when lecturers were mocked as unmonied people, a situation represented by a former Vice-Chancellor seen from time to time pushing his car which had once again broken down on the campus roads, as was the case with a particular former VC at the University of Benin.
Romanus Egudu, Victor Longe, Chinyere Okafor, Odun Balogun, Mr. Opene, Virginia Ola, Dr. Onwuemene, Okpure Obuke, Daniel Izevbaye ( on sabbatical from the University of Ibadan), Titi Ufomata, Rasheed Yesufu, Ogo Ofuani, Steve Ogude, Okeke-Ezigbo and Tony Afejuku, I greet you all.
The quality of his teaching, the pristine quality of his integrity, being a man immersed in his calling as an educator of youth and an adept in the rarefied world of scholarship, was one of my windows into the glory and nobility of scholarship and academic teaching, leading me in that direction at the beginning of my scholarly career.
You could disagree in an exam with Balogun's interpretation of a poem and still get a high grade in that exam, as was my experience.
I am haunted by the sense that I did not properly contextualize my reference to Odun Balogun in my description of the challenges of the Nigerian university system.
I also needed to properly credit my lecturers at the University of Benin, people whose teaching is central to whatever scholarly skills I have, strategic to the core of my knowledge base and to what it means to be an educator, people who doubled as teachers, scholars and unpaid guidance counselors in an environment where no one else existed to play that counselling role.
They did all this in a time when academic incomes had fallen to their lowest point, academics having had to resort to such strategies as owning meat shops, barbing salons, provision stalls and selling shoes, as had been the case at the University of Benin well before academics fortunes began to be improved after repeated ASUU struggles, a time when lecturers were mocked as unmonied people, a situation represented by a former Vice-Chancellor seen from time to time pushing his car which had once again broken down on the campus roads, as was the case with a particular former VC at the University of Benin.
Romanus Egudu, Victor Longe, Chinyere Okafor, Odun Balogun, Mr. Opene, Virginia Ola, Dr. Onwuemene, Okpure Obuke, Daniel Izevbaye ( on sabbatical from the University of Ibadan), Titi Ufomata, Rasheed Yesufu, Ogo Ofuani, Steve Ogude, Okeke-Ezigbo and Tony Afejuku, I greet you all.
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Apr 20, 2021, 6:19:08 AM4/20/21
to Yoruba Affairs, usaafricadialogue
The Story of the Villager in the City
Notes Towards an Idea of Village as Mindset
2
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems
"Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"
Why am I writing this at this time?
I am writing it because I feel guilty about the manner in which I used the example of one of my stellar teachers, Odun Balogun, in illustrating the point I was making about Nigerian universities.
To further validate my point in the argument discussed in part 1 of this essay sequence, I called Balogun's attention by tagging him in the discussion. Balogun had long left to take up an academic position in the US where he had thrived, publishing both books of literary criticism and short stories, in the spirit of the multi-creative thinker and imaginative worker that he is.
I am writing it because I feel guilty about the manner in which I used the example of one of my stellar teachers, Odun Balogun, in illustrating the point I was making about Nigerian universities.
To further validate my point in the argument discussed in part 1 of this essay sequence, I called Balogun's attention by tagging him in the discussion. Balogun had long left to take up an academic position in the US where he had thrived, publishing both books of literary criticism and short stories, in the spirit of the multi-creative thinker and imaginative worker that he is.
I was calling him to bear witness to my claims, as exemplified by the course he diligently taught us on literary theory in the final year of my BA.
Someone took me to mean that I was describing Balogun as a bad teacher. I struggled to argue that I was stating that Balogun was hampered by the resources available to him.
Balogun taught us at a time when the Structural Adjustment Program and the devaluation of Nigeria's currency had commenced the destruction of the international purchasing power of the naira.
That meant we were not able to access current texts on theory, being unable to access books from the West, the centre of theoretical discourse in the global academic system, and even more so, in those days before the drive towards epistemic decolonization.
Balogun taught us at a time when the Structural Adjustment Program and the devaluation of Nigeria's currency had commenced the destruction of the international purchasing power of the naira.
That meant we were not able to access current texts on theory, being unable to access books from the West, the centre of theoretical discourse in the global academic system, and even more so, in those days before the drive towards epistemic decolonization.
Even then, Balogun made the most of what was available, from the ancient Greeks to the present, including an introduction to African-American theory.
The quality of his teaching, the pristine quality of his integrity, being a man immersed in his calling as an educator of youth and an adept in the rarefied world of scholarship, was one of my windows into the glory and nobility of scholarship and academic teaching, leading me in that direction at the beginning of my scholarly career.
You could disagree in an exam with Balogun's interpretation of a poem and still get a high grade in that exam, as was my experience.
The quality of his teaching, the pristine quality of his integrity, being a man immersed in his calling as an educator of youth and an adept in the rarefied world of scholarship, was one of my windows into the glory and nobility of scholarship and academic teaching, leading me in that direction at the beginning of my scholarly career.
You could disagree in an exam with Balogun's interpretation of a poem and still get a high grade in that exam, as was my experience.
Wherever a person like me is able to journey in the world of scholarship is due significantly to the self-sacrificing vision of people like Odun Balogun.
Balogun's courses were central to my foundations in literary theory and to my foundations in European literature. The exposure they enabled to such European classics as Fyodor Dostoyezky's The Brothers Karamazov and to Charles Baudelaire's immortal poem ''Correspondences'' are illuminations that will always blaze in the firmament of my mind.
Balogun's courses were central to my foundations in literary theory and to my foundations in European literature. The exposure they enabled to such European classics as Fyodor Dostoyezky's The Brothers Karamazov and to Charles Baudelaire's immortal poem ''Correspondences'' are illuminations that will always blaze in the firmament of my mind.
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