The University of Ibadan Bookshop and the Textualization and Organization of Knowledge About Yoruba Civilization

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

The University of Ibadan Bookshop and the Textualization and Organization of Knowledge About  Yoruba Civilization

                

                     Abstract

This essay describes the University of Ibadan (UI) bookshop as signalling a renaissance of Nigerian scholarly publishing and examines its  vital role  in preserving and advancing scholarship on Yoruba civilization within Nigeria and beyond.

The essay focuses on the importance of clear, professional organization of the bookshop's Yoruba Studies holdings, reflecting the depth and complexity of the field in a  structure that is not merely a logistical convenience but an epistemic necessity, asserting the importance of endogenous knowledge systems within a global scholarly discourse.

Introduction: A Beacon of Scholarly Renaissance

When I visited the bookshop of the University of Ibadan, one of the premier African universities in terms of age and impact on scholarship, in July 2025, I was deeply impressed by their holdings, bursting with books in a broad range of subjects from the humanities to the social sciences and the sciences, with a lot of them being published in Nigeria, including by the University of Ibadan Press. 

This is an astonishing achievement,  given that Nigerian universities have been in a long struggle against degradation since the Structural Adjustment Program and the beginning of the devaluation of the naira, drying up the supply of books from abroad, then the primary feeder of the academic book industry, a situation reinforced by the  various shocks negatively impacting the Nigerian book industry. 

The contemporary achievement of the University of Ibadan bookshop indicates an emerging renaissance in Nigerian scholarly book publishing. 

A Culture of Interreferentiality and Endogenous Growth

Some of the most striking of the books in the bookshop, in  terms of quality of content and of production, were books about particular creatives and scholars, and books celebrating academics through writings by fellow academics on  subjects related to the interests of their colleagues being celebrated.

This development demonstrates a rich culture of ecosystemic internourishment, in which academics feed on and highlight each other's works, creating an expansive culture of interreferentiality strategic for developing a robust scholarly culture, as long as such ecosystemic integration is not limited to its own members but engages in dialogue beyond its own nation and continent, ideally on a global scale.

That endogenous ecosystematicity, in dialogue with the world, is represented by the greatest scholars and creatives in University of Ibadan history, from Abiola Irele to Isidore Okpewho to Wole Soyinka, from Kenneth Dike and Ade Ajayi to Chinua Achebe, Christopher Okigbo, Ulli Beier and more.

Historical Context 

These previous achievements demonstrated  in the 60s to the 80s and perhaps the 90s need highlighting beceause they represent a very different stage of Nigerian economic, social, political and academic history.

The conditions of these various sectors of Nigerian social existence have changed radically,  generating seismic effects on Nigerian academia, effects that, in the short run, were devastating, but with the ongoing example of the University of Ibadan bookshop, amplified by other booksellers in Ibadan whose inventories mirror the achievement of UI, such as Sunshine Booksellers and Mosuro, as can be attested by their websites and their quality delivery services, it would seem the tide is changing, into a situation where scholarship produced and published in Nigeria will again become a global reference point, an indispensable destination for certain kinds of knowledge. 

Textual Organization Beyond a Monolithic "Yoruba" Category

In spite of the magnificent harvest represented by the UI bookshop, as I observed it in my visit,  I observed some confusion about how to organise and present books on Yoruba civilization.

   Ifa

I was looking for books on Ifa, the central Yoruba knowledge system, as well as on Yoruba spirituality, and instead of being directed to sections on those extremely rich subjects in which the bookshop is well endowed, the helpful bookshop staff had to fish out books on Ifa and Yoruba spirituality for me from among a motley collection of of books under "Yoruba", books ranging from Yoruba language to endogenous Yoruba religion.

I was impressed with the bookshop's holdings on Ifa, ranging from the  magnificent Sixteen Great Poems of Ifa by Wande Abimbola, published by Ibadan University Press and a powerful  autobiography  by the great Ifa babalawo, adept in Ifa esoteric knowledge,  Ifayemi Elebuibon, to basic Ifa introductory texts.

I suggested to the bookshop staff, however,  that Ifa, as the richest and most globally impactful Yoruba knowledge system, integrating the visual,  verbal and performative arts, spirituality,  philosophy, herbalogy and mathematics,  requires a section of its own, given the international avalanche of unceasing publications on various aspects of this knowledge system.

Towards a Comprehensive Yoruba Studies Textual  Framework

On completing the first draft of this essay,  I called Mrs Afolabi, a very helpful staff at the bookshop to confirm whether my suggestions about how the bookshop's holdings on Ifa may be better organized and she assured me that Ifa now had a section of its own.

I also asked if an adequately organised section on Yoruba civilization, as different from a general lumping of books under "Yoruba" has been created.

She assured me that such a scheme has been effected

This positive development prompts a broader question: what would a fully realized taxonomy for Yoruba civilization entail? 

A well-organized section would guide the scholar and casual browser alike through the vastness of the field. 

I am not a bookshop professional nor a librarian and the UI bookshop managers would have their own visions, but as  a reader,  I could nurture some expectations reflecting my own understanding.

In visiting the University of Ibadan bookshop again, will I be adequately exposed to the breadth,  compartmentalization and perhaps even the disciplinary interrelationships of the civilization of the people in whose land the university is sited?

      Yoruba History 

Will I encounter, for example, a section for general Yoruba history, possibly taking the customer from such classics as Samuel Johnson's History of the Yoruba to more recent works such as Akinwunmi Ogundiran 's The Yoruba: A New History and Toyin Falola's Global Yoruba: Diasporic and Regional Networks? 

Will I  see units on various sub Yoruba histories, such as a section on the histories of various Yoruba communities,  such as the book on the history of Osogbo I bought at the bookshop or a section on the history of warfare in Yorubaland, a section title suggested to me by another book I got there, on Yoruba warfare in the 19th century, an escalated period of war in Yorubaland?

      Yoruba Spiritualities

Will I find there divisions dedicated to  Yoruba spiritualities,  the most globally impactful of African spiritualities and the most influential export of Yoruba civilization,  encompassing spirituality, philosophy,  the verbal,  visual and performative arts, the social sciences, science and building and landscape architecture,  those being the relevant fields I am aware of, a spirituality  central to the writings of the first Black person or African to win a Nobel Prize in Literature,  Wole Soyinka?

Will such a category range from general cosmological accounts,  such as Bolaji Idowu’s Olodumare: God in Yoruba Belief to works on particular aspects of the spirituality such as incantations to texts on specific deities as Falola's wide ranging edited volume Esu: Yoruba God,  Power and the Imaginative Frontiers, Ayodele Ogundipe's Èșù Elegbára: Change, Chance, Uncertainty in Yorùbá Mythology and Joseph Murphy and Mei Mei Sanford's edited Osun Across the Waters: A Yoruba Goddess in Africa and the Americas, among others?

      Yoruba Literature

Will the rich  Yoruba literature holdings of the bookshop enjoy a space of their own,  from works on Yoruba written literature,  such as the earlier achievements represented by D.O. Fagunwa  to  more recent writers such as Akinwunmi Isola to works on Yoruba oral literature such as books on  proverbs to epochal works like Karen Barber's I Could Sing Until Tomorrow: Oriki, Women and the Past in a Yoruba Town and Adeboye Babalola's The Content and Form of Yoruba Ijala?

    Yoruba Art

Classical, better known as traditional Yoruba art, is very well studied, perhaps one of the best studied bodies of African art.

 Will I find there shelving devoted to this field, in which will be visible works like Yoruba: Nine Centuries of African Art and Thought by Rowland Abiodun, John Pemberton III and Henry John Drewal,  The Yoruba Artist: New Theoritical Perspectives in African Arts by the same scholarly team, Abiodun's Yoruba Art and Language: Seeking the African in African Art and Suzanne Preston Blair's Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba: Ife History, Power and Identity, C. 1300?

What of books on contemporary Yoruba art, such as Moyo Okediji's Metamodern Vision of Tola Wewe?

       Yoruba Architecture 

What of Yoruba architecture, though I know of only one work in the field,Richard Babalola's magnificent essay  "Architectonic Interregnum"?

Could  I find books on it there, such as on the architecture and art of Yoruba palaces?

     Yoruba Mathematics and Yoruba 

      Philosophy 

Aimee Dafon Segla's Yoruba Mathematics is in French but there exist other works on Yoruba sciences, in English.

Yoruba philosophy is another very rich field, as demonstrated by such works  as Sophie Oluwole' Socrates and Orunmila and Adegboyega Orangun's Destiny and the Unmanifested Being although those two books could be classed under Ifa philosophy rather than Yoruba philosophy generally. 

      The Osun Forest

Should the Osun forest in Osogbo, one of the world’s premier demonstrations of the integration of nature, art and architecture, uniquely projecting endogenous Yoruba cosmology through its human creations and the relationship between these human creativities and nature, the site of the annual globally attended Osun festival, not have a section dedicated to it?

A good number of the books on that forest and on its primary moving force as an international destination, Susanne Wenger, are wonderful books and among the best in Yoruba, art, spirituality,  philosophy and landscape design.

The Question of Availability of Books

Are  books on Yoruba civilization published in Nigeria,  the primary stock of the bookshop and the easiest to  access by the institution, enough to justify the  creation of such an extensive sectioning of books on Yoruba culture in that bookshop?

Yes, from what I know of the bookshop's holdings and of those of other bookshops in Ibadan. 

A significant number of the best books on Yoruba civilization, however, such as some of those I have referenced,  are not published in Nigeria but in the West, where scholars,  Yoruba and non-Yoruba, African and non-African, utilise the enormous social, economic, institutional and publishing advantages of the West in producing great works, some of this research being done in Nigeria but published taking advantage of the previous superiority of printing by Western publishers, a field in which Nigerian printers have, however, become competitive. Some of these books are also out of print.

     Between the University of Ibadan 

     Bookshop and University of Ibadan 

     Press

Are South West universities, the location of Yorubaland, to  simply to look on while the Ogundirans, the Falolas, the Bliers and others consistently produce ground breaking works on Yoruba civilization that are published in the West and therefore are largely inaccessible to Nigerian audiences?

UI bookshop has a section dedicated to Falola's books but its ultimately a small selection of his vast output, even of those books of his dedicated to Yoruba civilization. 

The universities and publishers need to acquire the rights to republish books on such subjects in Nigeria. Oxford University Press used to and might still have such an arrangement in which it republished its books on India at cheaper prices in India.

The State University of New York Press used to and perhaps still has  a similar arrangement with such publishers in India as Motillal Barnasidas.

Conclusion: The Epistemic Significance of Textual Organization

        An Epistemic Imperative 

What is the significance of a lucid and professional organization of books on Yoruba civilization at the University of Ibadan bookshop?

The clear organization of knowledge is not a merely a question of convenience for readers; it is an epistemic act that shapes how knowledge is perceived, accessed, and valued. 

In relation to Yoruba Studies, such  organization is not merely logistical but intellectual, reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of Yoruba studies.

Such clarity and compartmentalization in organizing books on Yoruba civilization at the University of Ibadan bookshop is vital beceause it facilitates appreciation of the bookshop's holdings in the field and enables ease of access to those holdings, firing enthusiasm for the subject,exposing people to its scope,   framing Yoruba civilization as a coherent, world-class cognitive tradition.

Clear categorization facilitates discovery, enabling students, researchers, and the public to appreciate the interconnectedness of Yoruba history, spirituality, literature, art, and sciences. 

It maps the field of knowledge, visually demonstrating its breadth, depth, and internal subdivisions to students and researchers.

 It facilitates discovery, allowing for serendipitous finds and systematic exploration.

 It affirms value, signaling that this endogenous body of knowledge is worthy of meticulous curation.

      Yoruba Studies as a Global 

       Knowledge Matrix  

Yoruba Studies, the study of Yoruba civilization in all its aspects, is itself vital as a knowledge matrix, a constellation of insights priceless for understanding the past and the present and building the future.

How does one make sense out of what happened in the past and its influence in the present, how does one understand  the present and its value for the future, if not by learning of these phenomena, a process in which books are indispensable?

           Books as Cognitive Lenses 

Books are like lenses through which one looks at the world.  The richer the lenses the more significant their value for enriching perception. 

Books are the ideational structures through which the most sustained examinations of phenomena are often presented, a fact remaining true even in the information deluge of the Internet and the cognitive escalations enabled by artificial intelligence. 

          Theory Construction and Yoruba 

          Knowledge Systems

Particularly significant in relation to learning about Yoruba civilization is the contemporary development of theory shaped by contact with Yoruba thought and life. 

Theory is constituted by ideas explaining the character of phenomena at an abstract level, in a manner facilitating understanding of that phenomenon in various contexts, possibly correlating it with other  phenomena in an expanding field of relations.

Theory helps explain the constituents of the universe and their interrelationships, even when such explanations are not universally accepted or change with time as understanding grows and orientations change. 

Theory building has often been done in terms of cultural ecosystems emerging from shared national cultures, that of Western culture represented by Europe and its North American outposts being the most globally impactful for various reasons,one of them being the global imposition of Western culture by force of arms, giving rise to the global spread of Western learning systems and the most influential form of the university across the world,  built on Western models.

Various peoples, across the world, however, and even within the West, are working towards a diversification of systems of thought and cognitive processes at the level of such formal learning systems as the university, and are doing this through studying the cognitive achievements of various peoples outside the West as well as of marginalized communities within the West.

Such studies are vital for the sense of identity of those to whom those cultures are endogenous, indicating what their own people are contributing to the global knowledge space,  clarifying insights of particular relevance to their own environmental configurations and historical experience and providing rich wells of knowledge anyone,  anywhere, may draw upon and adapt and use at will.

Access to such cognitive networks developed in Yoruba civilization from earliest times to the present is adequately accessed in such a prime location of learning in Yorubaland as the University of Ibadan bookshop by the arrangement of the relevant books in a manner that enables ease of access and facilitates ready appreciation of the field in question.

Conclusion: The University of Ibadan Bookshop as Knowledge Gateway

The University of Ibadan bookshop stands not merely as evidence of Nigeria's scholarly renaissance but as a crucial bridge between past wisdom and future understanding, between local knowledge and global scholarship, between the profound intellectual achievements of Yoruba civilization and those who would learn from them. 

The bookshop stands as a vital hub for the textual preservation and dissemination of Yoruba civilization scholarship while the recent efforts to systematize Yoruba studies within the shop promise enhanced accessibility and appreciation. 

In an age where diverse perspectives are more important than ever, this effort can position the University of Ibadan as a global center for learning about Yoruba civilization and its invaluable contributions to human knowledge and theoretical thought.

Such an initiative not only supports local and global scholarly engagement but also anchors Yoruba civilization firmly within the expanding global knowledge ecosystem, transforming this commercial space into something far more significant: a vital institution for preserving, promoting, and making accessible the rich cognitive traditions of one of Africa's most influential civilizations.