Re: NigerianID | Ti Oluwa Ni Ile (2)

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toyin adepoju

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Oct 9, 2011, 4:20:19 AM10/9/11
to Nigerian IDENTITY, Odua, Yoruba Affairs
This contribution of DAWN, the Yoruba Development Agenda, by Oladipo Famakinwa, is very impressive.  The DAWN document is described in the mail below this response of mine. Oladipo Famakinwa, for his part, is responding to Pius Adesanmi's very rich essay which itself is attached to this mail.

I doubt, though, if the the following is not going to disadvantage children studying in Yorubaland:

"Primary school instruction throughout Yorubaland should be delivered in the Yoruba language. English should be taught only as a language to facilitate inter-ethnic as well as international communication."

I think this would be a mistake because Yoruba is not and is not likely to achieve the status  of a global language.

Therefore, it is more realistic in the global social  economy for children to be fluent in one native language and in English. The primary school years are strategic so to deny children at that age the grounding required to  master a global language will not help them in the long run.

The Yoruba writers and scholars who have achieved global prominence have done so through mastery of both languages. Without  his superlative command of English, Soyinka could not have projected Yoruba culture the way he has in his work. From his autobiography, it is clear he began reading in English at an early age.

In the light of these observations one  notes  that Yoruba civilisation is communicated through but transcends the Yoruba language. It transcends the Yoruba language because it embodies values of universal significance that can be communicated in other languages and which speak to timeless human aspirations.

One of those ideas is the conception of ideal human being described by the concept of 'omoluabi'. Others are  mythic forms, one of which  is represented by what Niyi Osundare, in an essay with that title, referred to as the 'Atunda Paradigm',  which Pius has described , even though I think Pius might have  oversimplified the story.

Another is the 'Esu' concept described by Pius. The central text here remains  Henry Luis Gates Jrs The Signifying Monkey. He uses Ogundipe's PhD thesis on Esu which seems to be yet unpublished. Toyin Falola is working on a collection on Esu. A fine summation is Obododimma's essay on Esu, which can found online.

Along those lines, would teaching in Yoruba not alienate non-Yoruba children, who are going to school not to learn Yoruba civilisation but to be part of a global society? To what degree can learning primarily in Yoruba help a student  understand and contribute to that global society, the protocols and forms of which have little or nothing to do with Yoruba civilisation?

The key should be grounding in more than one civilisation, not only in one civilisation. Yorubaland should also be able to develop itself as a centre of global education, not Yoruba centred education, even though training in Yoruba civilisation is vital. Being able to attract students from different parts of Nigeria and the world would have enormous advantages, from the knowledge made available, to the diverse skills, attitudes and sheer income accruing to Yorubaland.

Along those lines, one notes that a good number  of the scholars who contribute most to understand Yoruba civilisation are not Yoruba and do not live in Yorubaland. Examples range from the arts to the sciences, including the Drewals on Gelede,Ifa etc to Ron Eglash on fractals in his African Fractals and Gates on Esu,including Obododimma, ,although he lectures  at the University of Ibadan.

So, the task of educating people in Yoruba civilisation is best seen as development of the civilisation, not simply passing on ideas about it, and that task is less likely to succeed  in  building citizens of modern world if it is carried out primarily as an ethnic centred agenda, communicated through teaching primarily in Yoruba in primary school.The task involved is too great, too multifaceted and too interwoven with modern life.

Thanks
Toyin









On 8 October 2011 21:53, Adebayo Adejuwon <adead...@yahoo.com> wrote:
 

Excellent piece. Please let circulate this  clarion  call to OMOLUABIISM among all sons and daughters of Odua across the length and breadth of the planet earth.Most importnatly, let us make it a point of duty that all our elected public offcials in the Southwest to have  this piece on their desk as soon as possible.Let us make this piece available to all our  governors, commissioners for education, educational administrators across Southwest
 
A pdf version of Ti Oluwa Ni Ile... is hereby attached.
 
Ojo Payooooooooooooooooosi...............................O wi re o.



From: Oladipo Famakinwa <dip...@yahoo.com>
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Sent: Saturday, October 8, 2011 12:21:01 PM
Subject: [NIgerianWorldForum] Re: [NaijaPolitics] Ti Oluwa Ni Ile (2)

 
Ojogbon Payosi,

I salute you. Every time you write, you pile up more work for us. But before I forget: we are yet to conclude the discussion on your 'assignment' at the Yoruba Academy. Gbogbo igbimo n'duro de o.

Let me start by remarking the obvious: o wi're. Your 'Ti Oluwa Ni Ile' presentation is a clarion call, and the issues discussed should not be lost on all 'omo bibi ire' Yoruba. The first time I read the material (by the way, I have read it up to five times), I agonised so much that I had pains in my body, especially around my neck.

But I must point out that some of those issues are part of the core demands of the Development Agenda for Western Nigeria (DAWN) Framework, currently being pushed as a major Agenda for driving the growth and development of the Yoruba people everywhere. Indeed, the process of securing the buy-in of all the critical segments of the society has begun in earnest and I must say that the feedback is very encouraging.

(The DAWN Document has restricted circulation for now, but after a public presentation being considered, it would become part of the strategic assets of the Yoruba people anywhere in the world).

However, I'd like to quote from the document as follows:

"The Development Agenda seeks to encourage the Southwest States to develop a common set of integrated development strategies that enable the Region and its citizens to experience a well-managed process of development, across all spheres of existence. It also encourages the pursuance of a political (and possibly constitutional/legal) consensus and framework across the Southwest Region, with possible collaboration with the national government, to enable its unhindered implementation and actualisation.

The proposed strategic direction or redirection suggested through the DAWN Framework has been developed through a rigorous process, led and supervised by the Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG). This process has been inspired by the Yoruba people themselves, who clearly in public and private conversations, and indeed through their votes at the April 2011 general elections, and the ones preceding them in 2007 (rigged, but revalidated through the courts), determined and defined their obvious ideological preference. The political leadership has also clearly demonstrated a determination to advance the development of the Southwest Region and in fact the old Western Nigeria, including Edo and Delta, transcending political lines, where necessary, to launch a composite development agenda for the Region.

On September 23, 2010, the Yoruba people gathered at a Yoruba Development Agenda Summit, organised by the Afenifere Renewal Group (ARG) in Ibadan, and resolved, among others …………..

(a) That Yoruba electorate must rise up as one nation under one God, and ensure the emergence of political office holders who will truly serve the people, and espouse the Omoluabi ethics and values true to our heritage as a people.

(b) We reiterate the call for True Federalism to enable the constituent parts of the country develop at their own pace, and in accordance with their God-given potentials and capabilities, guided by the peculiarities of their history, cultural norms and inclinations.

(c) We call for immediate steps towards Regional Cooperation and Integration among the States in Yorubaland to boost social and economic development.

(d) That it has become imperative more than ever before for a composite Yoruba Development Agenda that will drive and guide our developmental process.

The ARG took a cue from all of the above, with the process culminating in the development of the DAWN Framework. This framework itself feeds largely from a commissioned study submitted to the ARG by the Yoruba Academy. The Academy, set up to provide the much-needed intellectual backbone for Yoruba development in all spheres of life, indeed provided the basis upon which further actions were carried out.

At a Retreat held on the 22 – 24 July, 2011, at the University of Ibadan Conference Centre, Ibadan, Oyo State, and attended by a conglomeration of some of the best intellectuals, technocrats and professionals in Yorubaland, the composite DAWN Framework, which also provided a Roadmap for action was developed.

DAWN focuses on the development of a Yoruba identity drawing upon our heritage, history and talent. It is an Agenda for Social Transformation using well-defined Pillars of Development to create a scenario that ensures better living standards for our people irrespective of status, gender, demography or religion, on a sustainable basis."

Specifically, on the issues you raised about education, below are some of the relevant KEY ACTION STEPS recommended by the DAWN Roadmap:
1. Based on recent results of WASCE, NECO and JAMB, and the urgent need to prepare the human capacity to shoulder the development aspirations of the Southwest, it would not be out of place to declare a state of emergency on education in Yorubaland

2. Education should not be limited to basic texts but should include skill requiring vocations. Every school leaver should be certificated in one vocation or the other. This is to equip him or her with a skill on which a micro industry can be established with minimum capital and making such person self sufficient.

3. Basic standard should be the ability to read and write and fluently speak Yoruba and English.

4. Primary school instruction throughout Yorubaland should be delivered in the Yoruba language. English should be taught only as a language to facilitate inter-ethnic as well as international communication.

5. In order to realise this dream of weaning the Yoruba child on the milk of Yoruba language and culture, there is a need for a re-evaluation of the school curriculum, the training of teachers and the translation of textbooks. These are endeavours that should be undertaken necessarily on a regional basis and therein are the first advantages of regional integration in education.

6. Education in the Southwest must become a tool for re-valuing the society by putting in place programmes that would encourage young people to understand the virtues of:
  • Ethics as basic principles 
  • Integrity 
  • Sense of responsibility 
  • Respect for laws and regulation 
  • The love of work – atelewo eni kii tan ni je 
  • Effort to save and invest 
  • The will to be productive 
  • Punctuality
7. Re-introduce subject like Civics and Basic Science (imo ijinle) to all primary schools in Yorubaland. The civics syllabus should be based on the Yoruba concept of Omoluwabi and it should promote the ideals of Yoruba heroes such as Samuel Ajayi Crowther, Obafemi Awolowo, Adekunle Fajuyi and the host of others. The instructions for the basic science kit developed by the Federal Government should be translated to Yoruba so that primary school children in Yorubaland can learn basic science in Yoruba from an early age.

Finally, it is very important for us to further explore the "myth of Atunda" as suggested by you. I also believe it holds a key to the much-needed regeneration.

Muni muni ko ni mu iye re lo, Payosi omo Adesanmi.

Diipo Famakinwa
From: Adebayo Adejuwon <adead...@yahoo.com>
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Sent: Saturday, October 8, 2011 7:29 PM
Subject: Re: [NaijaPolitics] Ti Oluwa Ni Ile (2)

 
By Pius Adesanmi
(Lecture delivered at the annual public lecture series of Afenifere Renewal
Group USA Chapter, Detroit, Michigan. September 24, 2011)
Protocols:
I’d like to thank Mr. Taiwo Oladotun Ogunleye, Coordinator of Afenifere
Renewal Group-USA, for accepting the punitive assignment of finding and
inviting me to this event on behalf of your organization. It was a punitive
assignment because even my most generous friends would readily concede
that Harry Houdini, that legendary American escape artist and magician, was
my elder brother from another mother. Hence, I plead guilty to being as
difficult to reach or pin down as my American sibling. I must also
congratulate the executive board and, indeed, all members of Afenifere
Renewal Group-USA, for convening this public lecture series. I am honoured
that I have been asked to deliver this “inaugural lecture” of sorts since this
is your maiden event.
Any doubts I might have entertained about being able to honour your
invitation because of scheduling conflicts
– I am in the middle of intensive
book promotion activities - were quickly brushed aside when I saw the
names of the three other invited speakers: Yinka Odumakin, Dipo
Famakinwa, and Omoyele Sowore. These men are national leaders whose
praxes and social vision make my own modest intellectual investment in
Nigerian public discourse worthwhile.
Every waking day is a struggle not to give up on Nigeria. Every waking day
is a struggle not to let Nigeria destroy your sanity. And when you approach
the sort of psychic ennui induced by worrying endlessly about the senseless
rape of our own dear native land by the world’s most irresponsible politi
cal
elite, you think of the inspirational struggles of the Odumakins, the Sowores,
and the Famakinwas of this world; you think of the force of their conviction;
you think of their determination to deny the traducers of our collective hopes
and aspirations the final word in the unfinished argument that is Nigeria;
you think of all this and you know that you dare not give up. I thank these
men for their service, leadership, and inspiration.
The personal examples of these three men bring me to my topic. Those of
you who are sufficiently familiar with my public writings and lectures should
know that I am D. O. Fagunwa’s Itanforiti, the storyteller. Thus, when Mr.
Taiwo Ogunleye gave me a topic, “The Decline of Omoluabi Ethos in Yoruba
Land”, with the caveat tha
t I was free to play around with it, he must have
suspected that he was tempting Mr. Itanforiti to fly here all the way from
Canada and regale you with stories.
Stories of things not remembered and the road no longer taken in Yoruba
land. Stories of how bastardized and countercultural versions of omoluabi
ethos have swept aside the real deal in Yoruba land, giving a satirist like me
a bumper harvest of material such as the stuff I served you in “Bode, Tibi
Nko?”, “Dimeji, Wahala Wa O”, “Dimeji’s Yams”, “The Lonely Charlatans”,
“You Be Tief, I No Be Be Tief” and many other satirical sketches that are still
travelling virally online. The more I thought about how realities in Yoruba
land have supplied the thematic core of my omoluabi satires for Sahara
Reporters and Nigerian Village Square, the more I realized that the decline
of omoluabi ethos is in part a consequence of our inability to probe and
listen to our own stories. I thought of the aptness of one biblical declaration.
“The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof”. This beautiful line from the
psalmist of the Christian imagination enters the Yoruba Bible literally as “ti
Oluwa ni ile ati ekun re”. As is the case in most instances of culture contact,
the universe of meaning contained in that Christian message is at variance
with the Yoruba imagination. A worldview that responds to Christianity’s
surrender of the way, the truth, and the life to the singular subjecthood of
Jesus Christ with a democracy of choices and options summed up in the
proverb
“ona kan o w’oja” (multiple roads lead to the market) cannot be
expected to surrender ownership of the earth and the fullness thereof to a
single deity.
Thus, the Christian “ti Oluwa ni ile ati ekun re” (the earth is the Lord’s and
the fullness thereof) is often replaced in Yoruba popular culture with a
version that responds more effectively to the pluralistic impulses of its
cultural context: “ti Oluwa ni ile ati awon ti o mo itan re” (the earth belongs
to the Lord and to those who know its story). This is where we get to the call
and response part of this lecture. Ladies and gentlemen, from this point till
the end of my speech, you will please oblige me with the refrain, “ati awon ti
o mo itan re”, whenever I say “ti Oluwa ni ile”. I am sure you all remem
ber
your Fela of “when I say panpala you go say bo lo o ya”?
Ti Oluwa ni ile… I can’t hear your response, let’s try again: Ti Oluwa ni ile…
ati awon ti o mo itan re! Of all the possibilities in this world, why would the
Yoruba accord co-ownership of the earth and the fullness thereof to those
who know the itan (the story); to those who remember; to those who do not
forget? Why are the owners and rememberers of the story so crucial to the
nature of things? Beyond my obvious writerly bias for stories, the answer, I
guess, lies in the fact history avails us of no example of a culture or
civilization that has ever risen above its own narratives. The loss of omoluabi
ethos in Yoruba land is therefore also the loss of the narratives that enabled
that vital aspect of being Yoruba. Ti Oluwa ni ile…
Ati awon ti mo itan re. I remember. My earliest encounters with the story
entitled Obafemi Awolowo. No, it wasn’t via the first television station in
Africa; n
o, it wasn’t in the classrooms of free education; no, it wasn’t on the
pages of his prodigious intellectual publications. My earliest memories of
Chief Obafemi Awolowo are locked up in the drama of years of a preadolescent
struggle against sleep. In the cornucopia of elderly voices that
come together to raise a child in the typical village setting came the urban
legend of Obafemi Awolowo’s chariot racing across the face of the moon in
the dead of night. I am sure you are all familiar with that story. Somehow,
only the elders in the village were ever fortunate enough to catch the
fascinating sight of Awo riding his chariot on the moon. As kids, we were
hungry for that sight. And we would keep vigil with the elders during tales
by moonlight. Ti Oluwa ni ile…
Ati awon ti omo itan re! No matter how hard we tried to keep awake, Awo
always managed to appear after we had fallen asleep. The elders made sure
of that. In the morning,
when each elder made the obligatory “k’aro, o jire”
passage by our house on his or her way to the farm, they would chat with
my parents
– always making sure that we , the children sweeping the
compound, were within earshot
– about Awo’s chariot across the moon the
previous night. Every elder had a detail to add, a variation on the theme of
Awo’s quasi
-celestiality, such that so much jara, so much curry, and so
much tomapep was added to the story. The exaggerations would make us
take a painful measure of what we missed and determine to stay awake next
time to try our luck. That good luck
never came. Ti Oluwa ni ile…
Ati awon ti o mo itan re! Now, years later, I look back on that Awo narrative
and try to remap the thought processes of the elders who deployed it as a
key component of the pedagogical tools with which they raised us in our
formative years. By constructing an imaginary that situates a Yoruba
national hero on the moon, the elders’ goal was to sensitize us to the fact
that our possibilities in life were limitless if we made ourselves amenable to
the principles of omoluabi and its corollary
– “bibi ire”. What propelled Awo
to the moon
– what our elders and parents wanted us to imitate – was the
profundity of the personal example that his life represented. And that
personal example had at its core the constitutive elements of omoluabi. Ti
Oluwa ni ile…
Ati awon ti o mo itan re! The connection between Awo’s moon myth and
omoluabi is not tenuous when you consider the core elements of omoluabi.
In his brilliant paper, “Human Personality and the Yoruba Worldview”,
Ademola Kazeem Fayemi, a philosopher at the Lagos State University, citing
authorities as divergent as Wande Abimbola and Sophie Oluwole, identifies
the following characteristics of omoluabi: oro siso (spoken word), iteriba
(respect), inu rere (being of pure thought toward others), otito (truth,
sincerity), akinkanju (bravery), ise (hard work), and opolo pipe
(intelligence). Ti Oluwa ni ile…
Ati awon ti o mo itan re! Obviously, any Yoruba can expand this list of
omoluabi ingredients but most people would agree that the father of them
all is iwapele or iwa rere (good or gentle character) and that is why
Professor Ademola Fayemi suggests that iwapele “is ultimately the basis of
moral conduct in Yoruba culture and a core defining attribute of omoluwabi”.
So important is iwapele that Yoruba Christians have lifted it from the
territory of omoluabi and grafted it onto the persona of Jesus Christ. Let’s
see how many of you can sing this Yoruba Christian praise song along with
me:
Mo fe dabi Jesu
Ninu iwapele o
Ko s’eni to gboro ibinu
Lenu re lekan ri o
(I want to be like Jesus
Good and gentle in nature and character
No one ever heard him speak in anger
Not even once)
The Yoruba Christians who composed this popular chorus obviously forgot
that Jesus spoke in anger at least once and even used his whip for good
measure on the moneychangers who defiled his Father’s house in Jerusalem
but that is a story for another day. Suffice it to say that Yoruba Christians
recognize the importance of iwapele and that is why they render it
indissociable from the nature of Jesus Christ. Bearing that in mind, what do
you think Suberu Oni, the famous juju maestro of the 1960s and 1970s, is
doing in this song that I am going to ask you to sing along with me?
Eni ba ri Awolowo ko ma ki ku iroju
Eni ba ri Awolowo ko ma ki ku iroju
Ile ejo ni Baba wa ni igbati Segun ku
Sibe sibe Baba o bara je
Eniyan bi Jesu
l’Obafemi o Awolowo
(If you see Awolowo, commiserate with him
If you see Awolowo, commiserate with him
Baba was in the middle of a court case when Segun died
Yet Baba never lost his composure
Obafemi Awolowo is indeed like unto Jesus)
So, Jesus is iwapele according to Yoruba Christians. And Obafemi Awolowo
is like unto Jesus according to Suberu Oni. Translation: iwapele, the father of
all the attributes of omoluabi, is the site where Jesus and Awolowo converge,
at least in the Yoruba imaginary. This explains why Awolowo’s already
daunting achievements in the spheres of politics, economics, and social
welfare in Yoruba land and in Nigeria pale in comparison to the suasive
power of his life as the example that parents across Yoruba land transformed
into a pedagogy of omoluabi to raise their children. “If you want to reach the
moon like Awolow
o”, they would say, “you have to do this, this, and that.” Ti
Oluwa ni ile…
Awolowo is, of course, not alone. Like every other ethnic nationality in
Nigeria and, indeed, like all peoples, the Yoruba have an infinite number of
heroes and heroines whose personal examples are also deployable and
serviceable at various levels of remove from the Awo script. In no particular
order of significance, I could very easily have cited Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti,
Kudirat Abiola, Ayodele Awojobi, Tai Solarin, Adekunle Ajasin, Bisi Onabanjo,
Olikoye Ransome Kuti, and Abraham Adesanya to create a topography of
useable omoluabi narratives. What is important for me here is that these
iconic figures have all given us the gift of the stories of their lives that could
be deployed as a transcendental template of omoluabi for current and future
generations of Yoruba children. What has the Yoruba nation done with that
gift? Ti Oluwa ni ile…
Ati awon ti o mo itan re. I have been in North American classrooms for more
than a decade now, having taught first at Penn State University here in
America and, now, at Carleton University in Canada. Location as a teacher in
North American classrooms confers the special privilege of firsthand
encounters with kids from especially two fragments of Nigerian society: the
arriviste upper middle class that my friend, Tope Fasua, loves to describe as
the “Murano to Mikano generation” because they drive their Murano jeeps
home from work only to turn on their Mikano generators; and the super-rich
class which comprises mostly you know who. In essence, from the upper
middleclass to the super rich, Yoruba parents have been sending Yoruba
children from Yoruba land to my classrooms in the United States and Canada
for a very long time. Ti Oluwa ni ile…
Ati awon ti o mo itan re. They come younger and younger every year:
Eighteen years-old, seventeen years-old: just past the critical core of their
formative years. The years during which stories of those who were propelled
to the moon and other lofty heights by iwapele and omoluabi were drilled
into my psyche and cultural personhood and transformed into the stuff that
my dreams for the future were made of. Like the poet persona in Birago
Diop’s beautiful poem, “Viaticum”, you know that every family, every nation,
owes it to the younger generation to equip them with cultural bases and
narratives before they go forth “beyond the seas and further still/beyond the
seas and further, further
still, beyond the sea and beyond the place beyond”.
No nation has any business sending out her children to meet the world with
zero or befuddled knowledge of who they are, of their cultural selves. Ti
Oluwa ni ile…
Ati awon ti o mo itan re. But you interact today with kids sent forth from the
Yoruba nation by Yoruba parents to come and continue their education under
your watch in North America. And you try to determine whether they
possess the cultural core upon which to build the cosmopolitan ethos of our
times. For no people has ever made progress by abandoning their own
stories. You acquire other stories in order to empower, enrich, and retool
your own foundational stories. You do not abandon them. Ti Oluwa ni ile…
Ati awon ti o mo itan re. And kids from Yoruba land have never heard of
Obafemi Awolowo. You try another approach and ask casually about Ayodele
Awojobi. No? Okay, what about Tai Solarin? No? Okay o, what about
Adeniran Ogunsanya? No? Okay, what about Simeon Adebo? No? Atanda
Fatai Williams nko? No. By now, despair sets in. You are afraid to ask about
Gani Fawehinmi. It would hurt too much to see a first year Yoruba
undergraduate scratch his or her head for vague memories of Gani
Fawehinmi who died just yesterday. You want to give up but you decide to
give it one last shot. Okay, what about Bola Ige? Here you strike gold.
Finally! The answer comes: “Ah, I know him sir. Is it not that man that they
said that they killed?” You know you have to be thankful and make do with
that answer. You don’t w
ant to push it. At any rate, your interlocutor is
already tweeting on his iphone or blackberry, the unmistakable signal that
your time is up: “it’s been nice meeting you sir. I’ve been hearing about the
things you write for Sahara Reporters. I may take a class with you next
semester.” Ti Oluwa ni ile…
Ati awon ti o mo itan re. This is how you sit down in your office in far away
Canada and gauge the temperature of Yoruba land and determine that she is
suffering from acute malaria. For how does one explain that kids go to
primary school in Osogbo, Akure, Ondo, Ibadan, Abeokuta, Ado Ekiti; and
secondary school in Lagos, Ogbomoso, Ikare, Ijebu Ode, Owo, Ilaro, Ikenne,
and arrive in American and Canadian classrooms at seventeen or eighteen
without ever having heard the singular or collective stories of the heroes and
heroines whose lives and service to humanity best exemplify the critical core
of their cultural being? And note that we are talking about contemporaneous
heroes here, not ancient or mythical heroes. It tells me that something is
fundamentally broken in the primary and secondary classrooms of Yoruba
land, the source from which those culturally denuded kids are unleashed on
North American classrooms. Ti Oluwa ni ile…
Ati awon ti o mo itan re. Do I need to state the fact that if we are raising
Yoruba children who no longer know the story, the earth and the fullness
thereof cannot be theirs? You cannot possess the earth based on other
people’s stories. Those who colonized us knew that much: that is why t
hey
insisted we adopt their own stories and proceeded to try to destroy our
stories. It is not for nothing that the French made Leopold Sedar Senghor
and his contemporaries throw away the stories of Askia the Great, Mansa
Kankan Musa, Lat Dior, and embrace
stories of “our ancestors the Gauls”.
The French knew what they were doing. They knew the importance of stories
for their policy of assimilation was really about replacing African stories with
foundational stories of French racial and cultural superiority. And the English
who taught you a load of bullshit about the “discoveries” of Mungo Park,
Livingstone, Stanley, and the rest knew what they were doing too. Despite
the gigantic project of historical redress that is
Things Fall Apart and Arrow
of God
, the venerable Chinua Achebe is still struggling for the restoration of
the story of his people. He calls for a balance of stories, a democracy of
stories, in his book,
Home and Exile. In the Yoruba case, how do you
struggle for a balance of stories when your children are now strangers to
your own stories? Ti Oluwa ni ile…
Ati awon ti o mo itan re. If you want to assess the gravity of the situation in
Yoruba land, you need to go to on a familiarization tour of Yorubascape on
Facebook and check out what Yoruba kids are doing to nice omoluabi Yoruba
names. It is pure horror. I opined in a previous public lecture that we shall
soon arrive at a situation where Yoruba parents would encounter their kids
online and not know who they are because of the strange new orthographies
that those kids are inventing for Yoruba names in order to be hip. I have not
noticed this trend among Igbo, Hausa, Fulani, Ijaw, Igbirra or Itshekiri kids.
Even here in the West, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese kids struggle to spell
their names in their respective native orthographies. That is why some
government official forms allow them to do that. Ti Oluwa ni ile…
Ati awon ti o mo itan re! Chinua Achebe warns us that the psychology of the
dispossessed is frightening. The psychology of the dispossessed! That is
what is on display when Yoruba kids arrive here straight from Yoruba land
and Olorunfemi becomes Horlawrunphemmy; Funmilayo becomes
Phunmeelayor; Fatosa becomes Phatohsa; Oladele becomes Horlardaylay;
Demilade becomes Daymilahday. Anuoluwapo, Iretiolu, Bukola, Motunrayo
and so many other nice Yoruba names are all victims of this identity Boko
Haram that is spreading like wild fire in the harmattan among Yoruba kids
online. Sometimes I am even happy that the kids do not know Fatai Williams
or Obafemi Awolowo because I don’t want them to go and rejoice on
Facebook that they just heard about two old school lapel Yoruba Chiefs
called Phatayi Wheeleeams and Kingphemmy Ahwolorwhaw. Remember that
one of the key attributes of omoluabi is opolo pipe (intelligence). Does the
cultural violence being done to the Yoruba self on Facebook translate to
opolo pipe? Ti Oluwa ni ile…
Ati awon ti o mo itan re! But it would be erroneous to blame these kids.
They are symptoms of a much deeper malaise that goes way beyond them.
They are products of a Yoruba nation that has lost the idea of the personal
example. Imagery of aspiration to the moon in order to be like Awo or of
aspiration to the top in order to master the art of rhetoric and eloquence like
the Cicero of Esa Oke has been replaced with imagery of the dock: Chief
Bode George in the dock, desecrating aso ebi in the process, Dimeji Bankole
in the dock, and lately, Asiwaju siwaju-
ing all the way to the dock. So, don’t
blame the youths like Orits Wiliki said
in that reggae song. Don’t blame them
if they ask you which examples, which iconic narratives of omoluabi you
have given them in replacement of the inspirational stories of Awo and his
contemporaries. With what have you filled the void left behind by the great
heroes and heroines of 20
th century Yoruba nation in terms of public moral
and ethical capital? Or do you expect these kids to draw inspiration from
your agbadas billowing in the dock? Ti Oluwa ni ile…
Ati awon ti o mo itan re. I have followed developments in the southwest
carefully since that part of Nigeria was thankfully taken back from the
vicious vultures in the contemptible PDP. The new governors have been
saying the right things. They have been articulating ideas of economic
regeneration underpinned by a deep social concern and vistas of Awoism but
I am not exactly sure that they understand where the renaissance they talk
about ought to begin. Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, for instance, likes to remind
us all that his state answers the name, ipinle omoluabi. Trouble is, like every
other state in Nigeria, the fragment of the population that will determine the
success or lack thereof of his vision is thirty-five years old and below. That is
the critical demographic that has been unmoored from culture and has been
hardest hit by the loss of the power and the appeal of the personal example
in Yoruba land. So, Ogbeni Aregbesola must be reminded that he cannot be
boasting about his “ipinle omoluabi” when the most critical demographic of
his state is out on Facebook or twitter saying that they are Phorlaryhemmie
from Hawshun or Horshun state. Let Ogbeni Aregbesola come and tell me
about omoluabi only after he has inspired his young citizens to spell Osun
state correctly. Ti Oluwa ni ile…
Ati awon ti o mo itan re. The new governors of the southwest need to
declare a state of emergency in education and culture. There ought to be a
pan-Yoruba education summit that would come out with a blue print, a
roadmap to cultural renaissance via education in Yoruba land. Governor
Kayode Fayemi recently ran into trouble with Yoruba youth online for
attempting to rename the state University. Although, some pointed out
–
and I agree with them
– that renaming a University is a misplaced priority,
others were not happy that he was going to change the name to Ekiti State
University and end up with the acronym, ESU. How can a University be
named after Satan, after the devil? Obviously, those kids who were up in
arms against the governor do not know the story. They do not know how
Esu
’s good name came to be ruined on his way into the Christian Bible. They
do not know that Esu of Yoruba mythology is not the Christian Satan or
devil. They do not know. Governor Fayemi ended up with EKSU to appease
the powers and principalities of cultural
ignorance. Ti Oluwa ni ile…
Ati awon ti o mo itan re. A pan-Yoruba education summit should adopt the
myth of Atunda as its operational theme. I am sure you all know the story of
Atunda in Yoruba mythology: the servant of the Orisa Nla who rebelled
against slavery and servitude, rolled a boulder over his slave master, and
broke him to pieces. The shattered god became multiple gods and deities in
a cosmological process of renewal. By opening his eyes and looking within,
Atunda answered Bob Marley’s question
: are you satisfied with the life you
are living? Atunda was not satisfied with the life he was living, he was not
satisfied with his situation, hence his foundational rebellion. This explains
why Wole Soyinka and Funso Aiyejina have argued that in Atunda the
Yoruba gave the world the first revolutionary, the first iconoclast, the first
progressive agitator, the first subject in history who resisted and rejected
oppression, the first agent of change and rebirth. Aiyejina even considers
Atunda the predecessor of Che Guevara, Martin Luther King, Marcus Garvey,
Frantz Fanon, Amilcar Cabral, and Eduardo Mondlane. Atunda snatched
order from the jaws of primordial chaos. Ti Oluwa ni ile…
Ati awon ti o mo itan re. We should be able to think up an educational
system that would revamp our culture and histories, regenerate them, and
feed them into the arteries of the postmodern condition like the Asians have
done. Until that cultural foundation is rebuilt, the Yoruba governors who are
talking about good governance and economic recovery in Oodua are wasting
our time. Those things cannot happen outside of a cultural rebirth that will
reposition our stories through an educational roadmap. This would imply,
among other things, conceptualizing actions that would meet Yoruba youth
–
the future of the race – where they are. Those kids are on Facebook and
twitter; they on Naijapals and Nairaland. They ain’t coming back because
they’ve got to move with the times. That is where we have to go and meet
them. Ti Oluwa ni ile…
Ati awon ti o mo itan re. And while we do this, we need to invent new
omoluabi narratives to replace the imagery of the dock. You will observe that
I called Odumakin, Sowore, and Famakinwa leaders at the beginning of this
lecture. That is evidence on the one hand of my belief that new role models
with deployable and uplifting personal examples must emerge and my
unwillingness to recognize the current rulers of Nigeria as leaders on the
other hand. Beyond the tragic generational disappointment that are the
Dimeji Bankoles and the Femi Fani-Kayodes of this world, we have to
consecrate new leaders whose stories are already personal examples
unfolding, new leaders whose service can become a new public symbology of
omoluabi. Our generation cannot afford to give those coming behind us a
legacy of the dock. Sowore, for instance, is a powerful personal example
unfolding before us but how many of our primary and secondary school
students know him, let alone aspiring to follow his example? We have to
map out strategies for putting these examples out there for our youth to
plug into. Ti Oluwa ni ile…
Ati awon ti o mo itan re. And there is no shortage of impressive generational
foot soldiers who are already answering the call of the Atunda dynamic in so
many little ways. I meet them. I meet them every day in kilobytes of
Facebook and gigabytes of twitter. I meet them: Kayode Ogundamisi,
Mallami Kayode, Tunji Ariyomo, Jagunmolu Oluwadare Lasisi, Tope Fasua,
Bamidele Ademola-Olateju, Adepoju Paul Olusegun. There are hundreds of
thousands more where that came from. A restless run of talents who are
already in the battle for renaissance in their own little ways. These folks and
many more like them that I meet daily remind me of everything that I know
about omoluabi. This is the pool that must feed the vision of the Odumakins
and the Sowores of this world; this is the farm that must be cultivated first
by the vibrant new governors of the southwest before they disturb us with
talk of economic development. Or have they not heard that the patriarch
who raises a house (economics) but does not raise his children (culture) will
see the house sold off by the children he did not raise properly? Only when
we get the cultural bases right shall the earth and the fullness thereof be
ours! Mo wi re abi mi o wi re?


From: Pius Adesanmi <piusad...@gmx.com>
To: i...@usa.net; Amauche Ude <udeam...@yahoo.com>; AfricanTalk <afric...@yahoogroups.com>; Valentine Ojo <elew...@gmail.com>; dandalin siyasa <dandali...@yahoogroups.com>; IgboWorldForum <IgboWor...@yahoogroups.com>; anambraforum <anambr...@yahoogroups.com>; umuanambra <UmuAn...@yahoogroups.com>; info <info_...@yahoogroups.com>; Participa...@pear.metrocast.net; niger...@yahoogroups.com; nigerianid <niger...@yahoogroups.com>; NigeriaWorldForum <NIgerianW...@yahoogroups.com>; NaijaP...@yahoogroups.com; NaijaO...@yahoogroups.com; TalkN...@yahoogroups.com; Odua <omo...@yahoogroups.com>; odide...@yahoo.com
Sent: Friday, October 7, 2011 6:31:57 PM
Subject: [NaijaPolitics] Ti Oluwa Ni Ile (2)

 
 
By Pius Adesanmi
 
(Lecture delivered at the annual public lecture series of Afenifere Renewal Group USA Chapter, Detroit, Michigan. September 24, 2011)
 
(Continued from last week)
 
Awolowo is, of course, not alone. Like every other ethnic nationality in Nigeria and, indeed, like all peoples, the Yoruba have an infinite number of heroes and heroines whose personal examples are also deployable and serviceable at various levels of remove from the Awo script. In no particular order of significance, I could very easily have cited Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Kudirat Abiola, Ayodele Awojobi, Tai Solarin, Adekunle Ajasin, Bisi Onabanjo, Olikoye Ransome Kuti, and Abraham Adesanya to create a topography of useable omoluabi narratives. What is important for me here is that these iconic figures have all given us the gift of the stories of their lives that could be deployed as a transcendental template of omoluabi for current and future generations of Yoruba children. What has the Yoruba nation done with that gift? Ti Oluwa ni ile…

Ati awon ti o mo itan re. I have been in North American classrooms for more than a decade now, having taught first at Penn State University here in America and, now, at Carleton University in Canada. Location as a teacher in North American classrooms confers the special privilege of firsthand encounters with kids from especially two fragments of Nigerian society: the arriviste upper middle class that my friend, Tope Fasua, loves to describe as the “Murano to Mikano generation” because they drive their Murano jeeps home from work only to turn on their Mikano generators; and the super-rich class which comprises mostly you know who. In essence, from the upper middleclass to the super rich, Yoruba parents have been sending Yoruba children from Yoruba land to my classrooms in the United States and Canada for a very long time. Ti Oluwa ni ile…

Ati awon ti o mo itan re. They come younger and younger every year: Eighteen years-old, seventeen years-old: just past the critical core of their formative years. The years during which stories of those who were propelled to the moon and other lofty heights by iwapele and omoluabi were drilled into my psyche and cultural personhood and transformed into the stuff that my dreams for the future were made of. Like the poet persona in Birago Diop’s beautiful poem, “Viaticum”, you know that every family, every nation, owes it to the younger generation to equip them with cultural bases and narratives before they go forth “beyond the seas and further still/beyond the seas and further, further still, beyond the sea and beyond the place beyond”. No nation has any business sending out her children to meet the world with zero or befuddled knowledge of who they are, of their cultural selves. Ti Oluwa ni ile…

Ati awon ti o mo itan re. But you interact today with kids sent forth from the Yoruba nation by Yoruba parents to come and continue their education under your watch in North America. And you try to determine whether they possess the cultural core upon which to build the cosmopolitan ethos of our times. For no people has ever made progress by abandoning their own stories. You acquire other stories in order to empower, enrich, and retool your own foundational stories. You do not abandon them. Ti Oluwa ni ile…

Ati awon ti o mo itan re. And kids from Yoruba land have never heard of Obafemi Awolowo. You try another approach and ask casually about Ayodele Awojobi. No? Okay, what about Tai Solarin? No? Okay o, what about Adeniran Ogunsanya? No? Okay, what about Simeon Adebo? No? Atanda Fatai Williams nko? No. By now, despair sets in. You are afraid to ask about Gani Fawehinmi. It would hurt too much to see a first year Yoruba undergraduate scratch his or her head for vague memories of Gani Fawehinmi who died just yesterday. You want to give up but you decide to give it one last shot. Okay, what about Bola Ige? Here you strike gold. Finally! The answer comes: “Ah, I know him sir. Is it not that man that they said that they killed?” You know you have to be thankful and make do with that answer. You don’t want to push it. At any rate, your interlocutor is already tweeting on his iphone or blackberry, the unmistakable signal that your time is up: “it’s been nice meeting you sir. I’ve been hearing about the things you write for Sahara Reporters. I may take a class with you next semester.” Ti Oluwa ni ile…

Ati awon ti o mo itan re. This is how you sit down in your office in far away Canada and gauge the temperature of Yoruba land and determine that she is suffering from acute malaria. For how does one explain that kids go to primary school in Osogbo, Akure, Ondo, Ibadan, Abeokuta, Ado Ekiti; and secondary school in Lagos, Ogbomoso, Ikare, Ijebu Ode, Owo, Ilaro, Ikenne, and arrive in American and Canadian classrooms at seventeen or eighteen without ever having heard the singular or collective stories of the heroes and heroines whose lives and service to humanity best exemplify the critical core of their cultural being? And note that we are talking about contemporaneous heroes here, not ancient or mythical heroes. It tells me that something is fundamentally broken in the primary and secondary classrooms of Yoruba land, the source from which those culturally denuded kids are unleashed on North American classrooms. Ti Oluwa ni ile…

Ati awon ti o mo itan re. Do I need to state the fact that if we are raising Yoruba children who no longer know the story, the earth and the fullness thereof cannot be theirs? You cannot possess the earth based on other people’s stories. Those who colonized us knew that much: that is why they insisted we adopt their own stories and proceeded to try to destroy our stories. It is not for nothing that the French made Leopold Sedar Senghor and his contemporaries throw away the stories of Askia the Great, Mansa Kankan Musa, Lat Dior, and embrace stories of “our ancestors the Gauls”. The French knew what they were doing. They knew the importance of stories for their policy of assimilation was really about replacing African stories with foundational stories of French racial and cultural superiority. And the English who taught you a load of bullshit about the “discoveries” of Mungo Park, Livingstone, Stanley, and the rest knew what they were doing too. Despite the gigantic project of historical redress that is Things Fall Apart and Arrow of God, the venerable Chinua Achebe is still struggling for the restoration of the story of his people. He calls for a balance of stories, a democracy of stories, in his book, Home and Exile. In the Yoruba case, how do you struggle for a balance of stories when your children are now strangers to your own stories? Ti Oluwa ni ile…

Ati awon ti o mo itan re. If you want to assess the gravity of the situation in Yoruba land, you need to go to on a familiarization tour of Yorubascape on Facebook and check out what Yoruba kids are doing to nice omoluabi Yoruba names. It is pure horror. I opined in a previous public lecture that we shall soon arrive at a situation where Yoruba parents would encounter their kids online and not know who they are because of the strange new orthographies that those kids are inventing for Yoruba names in order to be hip. I have not noticed this trend among Igbo, Hausa, Fulani, Ijaw, Igbirra or Itshekiri kids. Even here in the West, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese kids struggle to spell their names in their respective native orthographies. That is why some government official forms allow them to do that. Ti Oluwa ni ile…

Ati awon ti o mo itan re! Chinua Achebe warns us that the psychology of the dispossessed is frightening. The psychology of the dispossessed! That is what is on display when Yoruba kids arrive here straight from Yoruba land and Olorunfemi becomes Horlawrunphemmy; Funmilayo becomes Phunmeelayor; Fatosa becomes Phatohsa; Oladele becomes Horlardaylay; Demilade becomes Daymilahday. Anuoluwapo, Iretiolu, Bukola, Motunrayo and so many other nice Yoruba names are all victims of this identity Boko Haram that is spreading like wild fire in the harmattan among Yoruba kids online. Sometimes I am even happy that the kids do not know Fatai Williams or Obafemi Awolowo because I don’t want them to go and rejoice on Facebook that they just heard about two old school lapel Yoruba Chiefs called Phatayi Wheeleeams and Kingphemmy Ahwolorwhaw. Remember that one of the key attributes of omoluabi is opolo pipe (intelligence). Does the cultural violence being done to the Yoruba self on Facebook translate to opolo pipe? Ti Oluwa ni ile…

Ati awon ti o mo itan re! But it would be erroneous to blame these kids. They are symptoms of a much deeper malaise that goes way beyond them. They are products of a Yoruba nation that has lost the idea of the personal example. Imagery of aspiration to the moon in order to be like Awo or of aspiration to the top in order to master the art of rhetoric and eloquence like the Cicero of Esa Oke has been replaced with imagery of the dock: Chief Bode George in the dock, desecrating aso ebi in the process, Dimeji Bankole in the dock, and lately, Asiwaju siwaju-ing all the way to the dock. So, don’t blame the youths like Orits Wiliki said in that reggae song. Don’t blame them if they ask you which examples, which iconic narratives of omoluabi you have given them in replacement of the inspirational stories of Awo and his contemporaries. With what have you filled the void left behind by the great heroes and heroines of 20th century Yoruba nation in terms of public moral and ethical capital? Or do you expect these kids to draw inspiration from your agbadas billowing in the dock? Ti Oluwa ni ile…

Ati awon ti o mo itan re. I have followed developments in the southwest carefully since that part of Nigeria was thankfully taken back from the vicious vultures in the contemptible PDP. The new governors have been saying the right things. They have been articulating ideas of economic regeneration underpinned by a deep social concern and vistas of Awoism but I am not exactly sure that they understand where the renaissance they talk about ought to begin. Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, for instance, likes to remind us all that his state answers the name, ipinle omoluabi. Trouble is, like every other state in Nigeria, the fragment of the population that will determine the success or lack thereof of his vision is thirty-five years old and below. That is the critical demographic that has been unmoored from culture and has been hardest hit by the loss of the power and the appeal of the personal example in Yoruba land. So, Ogbeni Aregbesola must be reminded that he cannot be boasting about his “ipinle omoluabi” when the most critical demographic of his state is out on Facebook or twitter saying that they are Phorlaryhemmie from Hawshun or Horshun state. Let Ogbeni Aregbesola come and tell me about omoluabi only after he has inspired his young citizens to spell Osun state correctly. Ti Oluwa ni ile…

Ati awon ti o mo itan re. The new governors of the southwest need to declare a state of emergency in education and culture. There ought to be a pan-Yoruba education summit that would come out with a blue print, a roadmap to cultural renaissance via education in Yoruba land. Governor Kayode Fayemi recently ran into trouble with Yoruba youth online for attempting to rename the state University. Although, some pointed out – and I agree with them – that renaming a University is a misplaced priority, others were not happy that he was going to change the name to Ekiti State University and end up with the acronym, ESU. How can a University be named after Satan, after the devil? Obviously, those kids who were up in arms against the governor do not know the story. They do not know how Esu’s good name came to be ruined on his way into the Christian Bible. They do not know that Esu of Yoruba mythology is not the Christian Satan or devil. They do not know. Governor Fayemi ended up with EKSU to appease the powers and principalities of cultural ignorance. Ti Oluwa ni ile…

Ati awon ti o mo itan re. A pan-Yoruba education summit should adopt the myth of Atunda as its operational theme. I am sure you all know the story of Atunda in Yoruba mythology: the servant of the Orisa Nla who rebelled against slavery and servitude, rolled a boulder over his slave master, and broke him to pieces. The shattered god became multiple gods and deities in a cosmological process of renewal. By opening his eyes and looking within, Atunda answered Bob Marley’s question: are you satisfied with the life you are living? Atunda was not satisfied with the life he was living, he was not satisfied with his situation, hence his foundational rebellion. This explains why Wole Soyinka and Funso Aiyejina have argued that in Atunda the Yoruba gave the world the first revolutionary, the first iconoclast, the first progressive agitator, the first subject in history who resisted and rejected oppression, the first agent of change and rebirth. Aiyejina even considers Atunda the predecessor of Che Guevara, Martin Luther King, Marcus Garvey, Frantz Fanon, Amilcar Cabral, and Eduardo Mondlane. Atunda snatched order from the jaws of primordial chaos. Ti Oluwa ni ile…

Ati awon ti o mo itan re. We should be able to think up an educational system that would revamp our culture and histories, regenerate them, and feed them into the arteries of the postmodern condition like the Asians have done. Until that cultural foundation is rebuilt, the Yoruba governors who are talking about good governance and economic recovery in Oodua are wasting our time. Those things cannot happen outside of a cultural rebirth that will reposition our stories through an educational roadmap. This would imply, among other things,  conceptualizing actions that would meet Yoruba youth – the future of the race – where they are. Those kids are on Facebook and twitter; they on Naijapals and Nairaland. They ain’t coming back because they’ve got to move with the times. That is where we have to go and meet them. Ti Oluwa ni ile…

Ati awon ti o mo itan re. And while we do this, we need to invent new omoluabi narratives to replace the imagery of the dock. You will observe that I called Odumakin, Sowore, and Famakinwa leaders at the beginning of this lecture. That is evidence on the one hand of my belief that new role models with deployable and uplifting personal examples must emerge and my unwillingness to recognize the current rulers of Nigeria as leaders on the other hand. Beyond the tragic generational disappointment that are the Dimeji Bankoles and the Femi Fani-Kayodes of this world, we have to consecrate new leaders whose stories are already personal examples unfolding, new leaders whose service can become a new public symbology of omoluabi. Our generation cannot afford to give those coming behind us a legacy of the dock. Sowore, for instance, is a powerful personal example unfolding before us but how many of our primary and secondary school students know him, let alone aspiring to follow his example? We have to map out strategies for putting these examples out there for our youth to plug into. Ti Oluwa ni ile…

Ati awon ti o mo itan re. And there is no shortage of impressive generational foot soldiers who are already answering the call of the Atunda dynamic in so many little ways. I meet them. I meet them every day in kilobytes of Facebook and gigabytes of twitter. I meet them: Kayode Ogundamisi, Mallami Kayode, Tunji Ariyomo, Jagunmolu Oluwadare Lasisi, Tope Fasua, Bamidele Ademola-Olateju, Adepoju Paul Olusegun. There are hundreds of thousands more where that came from. A restless run of talents who are already in the battle for renaissance in their own little ways. These folks and many more like them that I meet daily remind me of everything that I know about omoluabi. This is the pool that must feed the vision of the Odumakins and the Sowores of this world; this is the farm that must be cultivated first by the vibrant new governors of the southwest before they disturb us with talk of economic development. Or have they not heard that the patriarch who raises a house (economics) but does not raise his children (culture) will see the house sold off by the children he did not raise properly? Only when we get the cultural bases right shall the earth and the fullness thereof be ours! Mo wi re abi mi o wi re?
 
(Concluded)
 
 






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Oct 9, 2011, 6:08:47 PM10/9/11
to Omo...@yahoogroups.com, Nigerian IDENTITY, Yoruba Affairs
The usual specious and very insiduous argument by europeans and their lackeys to continue their hegemony. Talegu or Hindi were not global languages of commerce and still are not. But that has not stopped Indians from teaching in Hindi and Talegu. In addition, it is not really apparent that because they did medicine in Hindi, they have been at a disadvantage in the U.S. for residency positions. One of them is even a governor in Luisiana and many of them are being seen in every walk of life now. Their accent is also unmistakeable but it has not prevented them from speaking english like anyone else.
 
Also, the attempt to try to claim that Yoruba intelletualism is in english language is part of the conspiracy of evil and lies against reality. This chalartan is trying to weave his illusion (as usual) that intelletualism or even intelligence has to be in their language alone. The real repository of Yoruba intellectualism is not in English language or even in those who think they have it. Those who undesrtand Yoruba and read drewal and the other charlatans (including Adepoju) know they have no clue. They are the ones who interpret the Yoruba word "Olorun" as "sky god" and think they represent Yoruba intellect. Any uncontaminated Yoruba will see through such fraud without even trying.
 
As europeans and their posterity know, they are the only ones who tell a lie enough and begin to believe their own illusions. That illusion is now being removed from the rest of the world by India and China. That is why they are now the predominant "minority" population in europeans' places of so-called intellectual activity. They speak their own languages and have to translate into english to teach these european touts and pimps (including Adepoju).
 
But we do not have to respond to this kind of european/eurocentric idiocy masquerading as thought.
 
This message is for the true Yoruba: The liar is active. Follow your intellect and do not let the pimp steal it. We maintain our silence and provide our intellectual property only to our own. These demons are running out of steam (in every way), and as is their nature, they are looking for something to steal by all means possible.
 
Don't let their contrived illusion of poverty (starvation) make you let them steal your birthright. You play with extinction, just like the Jubusites and Peresites of Canaan.
 
Keep them out.
 
Those who have ears ...
 
O.E.

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toyin adepoju

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Oct 10, 2011, 8:22:47 AM10/10/11
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A RESPONSE TO THE MAIL BELOW THIS ONE


Oga Maxima,

On Yoruba and English in Primary School Education
    
           Relative Levels of Vocabulary Range in Yoruba and English

 I did not say that the Yorubas should not use Yoruba in primary school teaching. I wrote that the plan to use ONLY  Yoruba would be counter-productive.

I dont think mainstream Indian primary education is conducted ONLY in an Indian language. If you have any evidence to the contrary, please present it. If the information is accurate, I will be compelled to re-examine my opinion.

I understand Yoruba is very rich but my studies so far suggest that Yoruba is very limited in terms of second order knowledge.

Yoruba has   depth in particular disciplines but seems demonstrate relative  paucity of knowledge  in most foundational disciplines in relation to modern knowledge.

Second order knowledge is the reflection on primary bodies of knowledge. So, Yoruba is rich in the arts but is weak in critical conceptions of art in terms of theory and practical criticism.

This is not surprising because the absence of a well developed and widespread means of syllabic writing makes it difficult to achieve the feedback between reflection and recording of knowledge across generations vital to developing a  tradition of second order knowledge.


Yoruba has philosophy, but I would be happy to be informed about the range of ways of classifying  knowledge, methods of gaining knowledge and criticism of claims to knowledge in Yoruba.

I am interested in reading about the scope of criticism of literature in Yoruba, ideas about the nature of such Yoruba poetic genres as  oriki, ijala, ofo, ese ifa etc and of how to study them.

I am interested in the scope of Yoruba aesthetic concepts, beyond the few introduced to modern scholarship by Rowland Abiodun and others.

I am interested in Yoruba scientific concepts covering the basic sciences from mathematics to chemistry and physics and the applied sciences of medicine and engineering.

If Yoruba does not have a significant vocabulary and knowledge base in these fields, why should would anyone short-change children by   place them  in a primary school that teaches only in Yoruba?


On Yoruba Studies in English : Interpretations of 'Olorun'

For some time now, people on Omoodua, including Maxima, have argued that classical Yoruba bodies of knowledge rendered in English are either inadequate or misrepresentations of the oral base.

Do you have any evidence to prove your point?

So far, only three efforts have been made to prove that point on these fora.

This latest one, by Maxima makes me wonder about his relationship with Yoruba studies of the past 50 years.  The Olorun as sky-god examples is an old one from  about 50 years ago. I first came across it being criticised in a review of the work of Harold Coulander from about the 1960s by Susan Wenger, the Austrian who settled in Yorubaland, whose own counter account of Olorun,written in English I will try to post here if I have the patience to get it out of my files. It is mind blowing.

After such early efforts that could have referred to as a sky-god, Olorun, 'Owner of Orun', 'orun' being the zone of origins, the template of existence and source of ase, the creative dynamism responsible for existence and transformation,  we have had Bolaji Idowu, whose Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief will forever be a landmark in African studies in its thoroughness, poetic and imaginative sensitivity and creative use of Yoruba bodies of knowledge, particularly Ifa,  as critical tools.

We hope for a development from the great achievement of Idowu that will examine what are described as linguistic inadequacies in his work as well as claims of an  effort on his part to exaggerate the significance of a supreme, unitary principle in the Yoruba cosmos in the form of Olodumare, while downplaying the role of the cosmic and terrestrial wisdom embodied by Orunmila and Odu in the context of Ifa or the emphasis on a monotheist inspired conception of hierarchy  rather than the  dynamic equilibrium that might be seen as described by the Yoruba cosmos by such accounts of this cosmology as those  by Pemberton et al in Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought and Awo Falokun Fatumnbi in his "Obatala: Ifa and the Chief of the Spirit of the White Cloth".

We have had Ulli Beier's The Return of the Gods: The Sacred Art of Susanne Wenger, which is centred in a sublime interpretation of the relationship between the Orisa, Olodumare and the cosmos, that provides  one of the few bodies of ideas on classical African cosmologies known to me that suggests the possibility of a philosophy that unifies the totality of existence  in terms of an appreciation of the beauty and knowledge of the cosmos, and may inspire an aspiration to unite human mind and the ultimate source of cosmic unity.

The works of Susanne Wenger herself are uncompromisingly  sophisticated and profound  encounters with Yoruba spirituality and philosophy, and to me, are among the greatest works in the history of religion and philosophy. They are not eclipsed by the most sublime writings from any religion or philosophy, from the Vedas and the Upanishads of India, to the Christian mysticism of St. John of the Cross, to the Islamic mystics and modern writers.

Her most significant work known to me is A Life with the Gods, stunningly produced in hardback with fantastic full colour and bold black and white photographs. Its a prize for anyone interested in any subject, from literature, to religion, to philosophy, to photography to art.Its cheap for its superb quality. The best source for it  I know  is a search at bookfinder.com.

Though visually powerful, it is dense with ideas and its style of writing is very  individualistic. Appreciating it is assisted by reading the Ulli Beier book and Wenger's other books of which Adunni by Gerd and Hotter, The Sacred Groves of Osogbo and The Timeless Mind of the Sacred are the ones known to me. She also has some powerful essays and interviews in various publications.

To give an idea of more recent sophisticated and profound  interpretations of Orisa cosmology, excellent short texts are Awo Falokun Fatumnbi's "Obatala: Ifa and the Chief of the Spirit of the White Cloth", a wonderful essay attached to this mail and the essay on  Olorun by Shloma Rosenberg who was an active gay community member,  Caucasian Jewish  olorisa beloging to a Cuban rooted Orisa lineage.

Along with these examples from my limited knowledge, there are other inspiring writers I dont know of or have not mentioned.One could see the beautiful blog Ifa Today, Ifa Yesterday, Ifa Tomorrow by a US babalawo, Marcus Ifalola Sanchez.

Anybody who wants to make definitive claims about   Yoruba studies  needs to be up to date.

If you want to claim that anything or most of what is written in English is inadequate, or totally ignorant, as Maxima states, you need to tell us why you think so. You need to show that you are  well informed on the written literature as well as the oral base of this literature. . Maxima  quoting a reference from about 50 years ago suggests the need  to read writings on Yoruba religion and philosophy more recent than that early period of modern scholarship in the field..

Another  effort to prove me ignorant was by Afis who made the mistake of claiming that Esu is invoked only to ask him to leave you alone. In response, I posted essays with pictures and words of Esu devotees that showed that Esu thought and practice is much richer than that. I can provide them again to anyone who is interested.

On Yoruba Studies in English : Ifa as Literature

There was this almost funny argument by those who disagreed with me that Ifa, like the Bible and the Koran, is literature. The argument is funny beceause it again shows the need of enthusiasts  of Yoruba civilisation to inform themselves on   the decades long struggles of Yoruba scholarship and of the intersection between Yoruba bodies of knowledge and other bodies of knowledge.

I tried to point out that ese ifa is largely imaginative verbal art, like the parables of Jesus.Words become literary when they are not meant literally. Does the ese ifa that speaks about the squirrel who consulted Ifa actually mean that a real squirrel consulted a real babalawo? Does Jesus mean that a real Samaritan saved the life of a real man attacked by real thieves in his parable of the Good Samaritan? When the Koran says Allah is  a lamp nested in a rock, does it mean Allah is a real lamp in a real rock, perhaps somewhere in Arabia or in a real rock in heaven?

Just like if I say 'I ate a mountain of pounded yam' does not mean I really ate a  mountain sized amount of pounded yam, so when ese ifa states that Esu slept in the house and verandah but remained uncomfortable but when he slept in a groundnut shell, he had enough space, so it does not mean that the poet thinks  Esu actually experimented with those sleeping locations but is suggesting Esu's  paradoxical relationship with reality.

All the examples above, because they communicate indirectly, implicitly  and imaginatively,  rather than directly and explicitly  are literary. They are connotative rather than denotative and literal

Its the difference between saying ' I need a glass of water' and 'that book is watery'. I dont mean there is real water in the water in the book, or that the bok is made of water,  like the water I drink from a glass after pouring it from a tap. I mean the book is weak in ideas like water has a fluid consistency, not hard.

Most ese ifa I have read are in that imaginative and literary mode.

Their imaginative form is part of their sacred character since it evokes a sacredly perceived universe and is understood as focusing, concentrating and directing the creative power of ase, what Afis means in describing ese ifa as incantations. Incantations in all languages are forms of literature, a form, of poetry.

Another effort was by Valentine Ojo. We have an unfinished argument on Ifa which I will post my response to.

My central opinion is that almost every critic of mine on these fora in relation to Ifa does not study Yoruba religion and philosophy beceause they dont show knowledge of the field.

Comparing Classical  Cultures of Scholarship in Indian, Chinese and Yoruba Civilisations

 We need to be careful about comparisons with India and China. First, these civilizations developed writing centuries ago and have an advanced culture of secondary knowedge. Yorubaland and most parts of Africa did not develop significant scribal literacy and as far as I know, have weak secondary bodies of knowledge.

There is a strong tradition of Indian art AND aesthetics, with ancient Sanskrit manuscripts  being translated and used today. The same with China, the people who invented the rocket. The languages and culture of scholarship  of such peoples are far superior to Yoruba and other African languages as media of scholarship on account of the scope and flexibility of knowledge developed with the aid of recording and dissemination achieved through writing.

The Yoruba oral corpus is huge in size  but is more limited in range of ideas and vocabulary, to the best of my knowedledge.

Even then, I think Indian academic education is primarily in English and a good number of its organs of communication are in English.

These issues are best approached through sober and broadly informed consideration of the relevant issues, not in terms of an ethnically centred braggadocio.

thanks
toyin


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