Ishola’s strange mission to Adekunle Ajasin varsity

 WITH much expectation, the crowd waited in the main auditorium of the Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko, penultimate Thursday, for the Convocation lecture to commence. Most of the invited guests wondered how the don,  who studied French in his first degree programme and later took higher degrees in Yoruba

language, and who had taught his students in English for many years,  could deliver a two-hour lecture in straight and undiluted Yoruba. Although many of them knew that Ishola was a cultural icon, they still wondered how he would accomplish this task without code-mixing the words with other languages.

The renowned academic, prolific writer and artiste, however,  ensured that he kept his listeners glued to their seats throughout the lecture. He did justice to the topic, “Kini a fe fi Ede Yoruba se?”, meaning “What really do we want with Yoruba Language”.

He brought out the beauty of the language through his impeccable accent and the rhythm of his thoughts,  as well as his mastery of  proverbs, traditional folklore, and music,  which, he averred, needed to be saved from extinction.

Ishola said every Yoruba man, young or old, lettered or unlettered, would be held liable if the language is allowed to die. According to him, nobody appeared to be making conscious efforts to keep it alive.

He said, “Over 30 years ago, when I became a professor, I had to give an inaugural lecture. I was asked to do so at the Department of African Languages at the University of Ifè. I told the Vice Chancellor, Prof. Wándé Abímbólá, that I would like to give mine in Yorùbá. He said that Yorùbá was not the language of inaugural lectures. But Yorùbá was the language of instruction in our department!

“Before then we had fought hard to make Yorùbá the language for writing post graduate dissertations. The matter got to the Senate for discussion and there was so much laughter in the beginning. They thought we could not write dissertations in Yorùbá! But at last our request was granted.

“That is why, up till today, it is at the Obáfémi Awólówò University, Ilé-Ifè and Adékúnlé Ajásin University, Àkùngbá-Àkókó that post-graduate theses in Yorùbá are written in the Yorùbá language. Can you believe that even at the University of Ìbàdàn, where the teaching of Yorùbá language started, postgraduate theses are still being written in English?”

Ishola commended the authorities of the Ajasin varsity for being the first in Africa to organise a convocation lecture in an indigenous language and urged others to emulate the feat.

He said, “What  you  are doing today is extremely very important! You are presenting the first Convocation Lecture in Yoruba! Momentous! It is also first in Africa! Now, wait a minute. Here at Adékúnlé Ajásin University, Àkùngba-Àkókó, on Tuesday October 11, 2011, Professor Olúyémisí Adébòwálé presented her inaugural lecture titled Writing and Reading: The Experience in Indigenous Yorùbá Literary Art.

“I was not present, but I read it. It was full of words we used in serious academic literary work, the theory and the criticism, the analysis. Just imagine how more significant for Yorùbá Studies it would have been if it had been presented in the Yorùbá language!”

He noted that towards the end of the 19th Century and early in the 20th, when educated Africans, mostly Christians and missionaries,  were being discriminated against by the same white evangelists who were preaching universal brotherhood and equality of all men before God, they realised that what Christianity brought to them was not that of the Bible but that which Europeans had formulated for themselves.

He said educated Africans therefore became cultural nationalists and went back to their own culture to retrieve the dignity denied them by white racists in Lagos. “From 1890 onwards useful researches were conducted into Yorùbá history and other aspects of the culture,” he noted.

One of the many fruits of that initiative, Ishola noted, was Samuel Johnson’s monumental History of the Yorùbás,  published 1921.

“The point I am trying to make is that, on many important occasions in the past,  whenever our cultural dignity was threatened, there would arise some group or an individual to defend it,” Ishola said.

He noted with serious concern that the greatest challenge facing the Yoruba cultural heritage at the moment was the neo-Pentecostal Movement, which he described as the stronghold of religious intolerance.

He said, “Globalisation has compounded problems in every aspect of our life. Foreign radio and television channels overwhelm African youths with a lot of glamorous garbage. The result is a total disdain for all aspects of African culture.

“Many members of the Yorùbá elite have stopped speaking Yorùbá to their ‘children. Language is the soul of culture. Many parents can really not speak good Yorùbá. Our ordinary conversations are pitiful examples of code-switching and helpless code-mixing. We are gradually becoming a nation without a language.

“In this regard, being born again really means going back to your God-given culture to learn how to be a good citizen.

“Every human child grows up speaking its mother tongue without being taught? The child grows up to learn or acquire other languages it comes into contact with.

“It is however, unfortunate that in contemporary times, the mother tongue which constitutes and remains the foundation for the child’s other language experience is not properly imbibed before a second language is introduced in the name of modernity.

“This single action negatively impacts on the child who fails to attain competence in the native language and the second language. The most disheartening aspect of it was that the National Education Research Council had reportedly removed indigenous languages from the list of compulsory subjects because of the need to drastically reduce the number of subjects offered in schools in the country.

“The implication is that Yorùbá, Hausa or Igbo are no longer on the compulsory list of subjects to be offered at the Senior Secondary School Certificate Examination. This is a serious challenge for the continued survival of the mother tongue in Nigerian schools.”

He, however,  said several steps can still be taken to redress the negative attitude towards the mother tongue, especially with the efforts of International bodies and organisations like UNESCO on safeguarding the intangible cultural heritage. Ishola urged Nigerians to teach the young ones indigenous languages without code-mixing. He said, “Let us allow teachers to teach them English which is our second language in their various schools.

“We also expect Nollywood film makers to consider writing and acting kiddies plays in Yorùbá as this would not only make the younger generation to have a better understanding of the language, it would also make them to develop interest in it.

“Radio presenters are encouraged to air more Yorùbá programmes as this would definitely impact positively on the populace. It is high time our traditional rulers paid more attention to the use of Yorùbá language so that their subjects will know the importance and value of the language.

“We expect traditional rulers to speak the Yorùbá language whenever they have visitors in their domain; interpreters may then translate whatever they say to English for the benefit of those who do not understand Yorùbá language.